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Via The Long Tail: This is what I'm talking about
Wednesday 28 February 2007
The Evolution of the Web and Web2.0+ Implications ....
Very nicely explained in a beautifully simple 5minute video. Recommended viewing ...
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Via The Long Tail: This is what I'm talking about
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Via The Long Tail: This is what I'm talking about
Tuesday 27 February 2007
And the Oscar for navel-gazing goes to... | Dt Opinion | Opinion | Telegraph
Surely it is time that this 'ceremony' was realised to be a somewhat pointless anachronism, and duly canned? Come on, it's not even lightweight entertainment/glamour, is it? If so, to whom?
Well done to Helen Mirren for at least bringing a bit of grace and humility to proceedings (in an excellent film, by the way), but this is beginning to look an increasingly tasteless, disingenuous and utterly irrelevant 'event'. In this era of perspective, humility, accountability and transparency this is the last bastion of crassness and hubris.
--
I stayed up all night to watch the Oscars, then immediately wished I had spent those precious hours making Easter cards with the mentally ill. The whole thing was hyped in advance as a British invasion - lock up your Oscars, the ultra-talented Brits are coming to sweep the town! In the end, we won two, while a conga-line of statuettes was last seen making its way from the Kodak Theatre to the upper reaches of Beverly Hills.
Why do we buy into this nonsense every year? Is it because each nation nowadays experiences a cultural cringe when faced with the great power of the American entertainment industry? Hollywood recognition, it would appear, not only trounces any other kind of plaudit, but fills actors, directors and like-minded individuals with the feeling that only through the Oscars can they address the world.
This might be good news for the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, but it's not good news for America. The Oscars, more perhaps than any other US institution, is a powerhouse of strictly American feelings, and the world as a whole is not always crazy to have that kind of feeling stuffed down its throat. Hollywood is a very small community of wealthy and successful people, devoted to the high-gloss business of congratulating itself. And despite its gestures towards "respecting" and "recognising" foreign excellence, the Academy Awards ceremony only knows how to celebrate foreignness in purely American terms. That's to say - patronisingly.
More than 80 per cent of Americans do not own a passport. Hardly any young people speak a second language. Though a majority of the population are said to favour military intervention in the Middle East, fewer than one in 50 can name the countries that border Iraq. (This might explain why the British movie Borat, which satirises this situation, won nothing at the Oscars.)
Further to that, the criminalisation of economic migrants in the US is rife, but was nowhere mentioned in the six hours of Oscar telecast, despite one of the main nominated films, Babel, dealing with the subject.
The difficulty is that Hollywood sees itself as a community of sophisticated kingmakers. It was more embarrassing than funny to see leading actor Leonardo DiCaprio, during the ceremony, trying to convince former vice president and 2000 presidential nominee Al Gore to announce his plans to run in 2008. The Academy was celebrating Gore's hard-hitting and enjoyable global warming film, The Inconvenient Truth (it won Best Documentary), but none of these so-called politicos was willing to use the Oscars to criticise American policy in that area. No - it was joy, joy, fun, fun, all the way, and everybody got to look like a grinning idiot about those matters that really matter.
Meanwhile, just before they unrolled the red carpet for the 79th Oscars, the co-chairman of DreamWorks, David Geffen - who is also a leading organiser in this week's Hollywood fundraiser for presidential candidate Barack Obama - unleashed a powerful public onslaught on Hillary Clinton. "Everybody in politics lies," said Geffen, "but they [the Clintons] do it with such ease, it's troubling." Geffen was a serial guest at the White House during the Clinton Administration - after raising $19 million for Bill's campaign - but has gone sour on the Arkansas couple since Hillary refused to renounce the Iraq war.
Was there a sign of any of this disputation at the Oscars? Not a bit of it. Amid the backslapping and the "celebration" of foreign cultures, there wasn't a single word about how America's standing in the world may have been damaged by recent events and by the country's failure to face the facts about its ailing reputation abroad.
Into this farrago of glitzy evasion came the British nominees, Helen Mirren picking up a Union flag from a television reporter and waving it for the world's cameras, as if to beg for some small, green and pleasant recognition in the midst of this great heatwave of American arrogance. And it seems the whole civilised world is a sucker for that heat, including those Americans who have spent their careers railing against complacency and falsity in national affairs.
Martin Scorsese wanted his Oscar so bad, he looked like he might murder somebody if he didn't get it. And when he did, what an obsequious, fawning performance he gave: no culture has a people so ready to invoke the name of God as soon as they get exactly what they want. After countless nominations, Scorsese received his award from a triumvirate of 1970s so-called mavericks - Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas - and looked like he might faint with gratitude that the Establishment had finally given him the nod. It might have been more stylish if he had thrown it back in their faces.
"Hollywood is a place where they'll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and 50 cents for your soul," said Marilyn Monroe. I've always loved the movies, but hated the way the American industry lords it over the globe, practising prejudices and enforcing stereotypes while claiming to be the last bastion of liberal progress.
This year's ceremony featured a self-congratulatory montage of movies that were thought to have dealt in a decisive way with difficult human issues; but it was all nostalgia and showbusiness, the hallmark of the Academy Awards.
No one wanted to use the platform to grapple with the difficult topics of our day, unless they could prove immediately "inspiring". The 2007 Oscars might have been the most expensive exercise in not rocking the boat ever mounted.
The advertised British invasion was a piece of nonsense, of course, and the best of the international talent left the auditorium empty-headed, if not empty-handed, after their spell under the klieg lights and the falling tinsel.
Perhaps next year's British contenders will prove less deferentially inclined to believe the Hollywood hype, and will bring a more characterful dose of scepticism to the proceedings.
And the Oscar for navel-gazing goes to... Dt Opinion Opinion Telegraph
Well done to Helen Mirren for at least bringing a bit of grace and humility to proceedings (in an excellent film, by the way), but this is beginning to look an increasingly tasteless, disingenuous and utterly irrelevant 'event'. In this era of perspective, humility, accountability and transparency this is the last bastion of crassness and hubris.
--
I stayed up all night to watch the Oscars, then immediately wished I had spent those precious hours making Easter cards with the mentally ill. The whole thing was hyped in advance as a British invasion - lock up your Oscars, the ultra-talented Brits are coming to sweep the town! In the end, we won two, while a conga-line of statuettes was last seen making its way from the Kodak Theatre to the upper reaches of Beverly Hills.
Why do we buy into this nonsense every year? Is it because each nation nowadays experiences a cultural cringe when faced with the great power of the American entertainment industry? Hollywood recognition, it would appear, not only trounces any other kind of plaudit, but fills actors, directors and like-minded individuals with the feeling that only through the Oscars can they address the world.
This might be good news for the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, but it's not good news for America. The Oscars, more perhaps than any other US institution, is a powerhouse of strictly American feelings, and the world as a whole is not always crazy to have that kind of feeling stuffed down its throat. Hollywood is a very small community of wealthy and successful people, devoted to the high-gloss business of congratulating itself. And despite its gestures towards "respecting" and "recognising" foreign excellence, the Academy Awards ceremony only knows how to celebrate foreignness in purely American terms. That's to say - patronisingly.
More than 80 per cent of Americans do not own a passport. Hardly any young people speak a second language. Though a majority of the population are said to favour military intervention in the Middle East, fewer than one in 50 can name the countries that border Iraq. (This might explain why the British movie Borat, which satirises this situation, won nothing at the Oscars.)
Further to that, the criminalisation of economic migrants in the US is rife, but was nowhere mentioned in the six hours of Oscar telecast, despite one of the main nominated films, Babel, dealing with the subject.
The difficulty is that Hollywood sees itself as a community of sophisticated kingmakers. It was more embarrassing than funny to see leading actor Leonardo DiCaprio, during the ceremony, trying to convince former vice president and 2000 presidential nominee Al Gore to announce his plans to run in 2008. The Academy was celebrating Gore's hard-hitting and enjoyable global warming film, The Inconvenient Truth (it won Best Documentary), but none of these so-called politicos was willing to use the Oscars to criticise American policy in that area. No - it was joy, joy, fun, fun, all the way, and everybody got to look like a grinning idiot about those matters that really matter.
Meanwhile, just before they unrolled the red carpet for the 79th Oscars, the co-chairman of DreamWorks, David Geffen - who is also a leading organiser in this week's Hollywood fundraiser for presidential candidate Barack Obama - unleashed a powerful public onslaught on Hillary Clinton. "Everybody in politics lies," said Geffen, "but they [the Clintons] do it with such ease, it's troubling." Geffen was a serial guest at the White House during the Clinton Administration - after raising $19 million for Bill's campaign - but has gone sour on the Arkansas couple since Hillary refused to renounce the Iraq war.
Was there a sign of any of this disputation at the Oscars? Not a bit of it. Amid the backslapping and the "celebration" of foreign cultures, there wasn't a single word about how America's standing in the world may have been damaged by recent events and by the country's failure to face the facts about its ailing reputation abroad.
Into this farrago of glitzy evasion came the British nominees, Helen Mirren picking up a Union flag from a television reporter and waving it for the world's cameras, as if to beg for some small, green and pleasant recognition in the midst of this great heatwave of American arrogance. And it seems the whole civilised world is a sucker for that heat, including those Americans who have spent their careers railing against complacency and falsity in national affairs.
Martin Scorsese wanted his Oscar so bad, he looked like he might murder somebody if he didn't get it. And when he did, what an obsequious, fawning performance he gave: no culture has a people so ready to invoke the name of God as soon as they get exactly what they want. After countless nominations, Scorsese received his award from a triumvirate of 1970s so-called mavericks - Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas - and looked like he might faint with gratitude that the Establishment had finally given him the nod. It might have been more stylish if he had thrown it back in their faces.
"Hollywood is a place where they'll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and 50 cents for your soul," said Marilyn Monroe. I've always loved the movies, but hated the way the American industry lords it over the globe, practising prejudices and enforcing stereotypes while claiming to be the last bastion of liberal progress.
This year's ceremony featured a self-congratulatory montage of movies that were thought to have dealt in a decisive way with difficult human issues; but it was all nostalgia and showbusiness, the hallmark of the Academy Awards.
No one wanted to use the platform to grapple with the difficult topics of our day, unless they could prove immediately "inspiring". The 2007 Oscars might have been the most expensive exercise in not rocking the boat ever mounted.
The advertised British invasion was a piece of nonsense, of course, and the best of the international talent left the auditorium empty-headed, if not empty-handed, after their spell under the klieg lights and the falling tinsel.
Perhaps next year's British contenders will prove less deferentially inclined to believe the Hollywood hype, and will bring a more characterful dose of scepticism to the proceedings.
And the Oscar for navel-gazing goes to... Dt Opinion Opinion Telegraph
Monday 26 February 2007
GigaOM » Hollywood Disrupted
Reading through the LA Times, as I do before The Oscars every year, I came across a fantastic Op-Ed written by a respected Hollywood author by the name of Neal Gabler. The opinion piece, titled “The Movie Magic is Gone”, explains how Hollywood is losing its place as the epicenter of cultural products and how movies are losing their relevance as the “barometers of the American psyche”.
And what is culprit? You guessed it… the rise of social media! As Gabler elaborates:
“All of this has been hastened by the fact that there is now an instrument to take advantage of the social stratifications. To the extent that the Internet is a niche machine, dividing its users into tiny, self-defined categories, it is providing a challenge to the movies that not even television did, because the Internet addresses a change in consciousness while television simply addressed a change in delivery of content. Television never questioned the very nature of conventional entertainment. The Internet, on the other hand, not only creates niche communities — of young people, beer aficionados, news junkies, Britney Spears fanatics — that seem to obviate the need for the larger community, it plays to another powerful force in modern America and one that also undermines the movies: narcissism. It is certainly no secret that so much of modern media is dedicated to empowering audiences that no longer want to be passive. Already, video games generate more income than movies by centralizing the user and turning him into the protagonist. Popular websites such as Facebook, MySpace and YouTube, in which the user is effectively made into a star and in which content is democratized, get far more hits than movies get audiences. ”
What Gabler calls “narcissism,” I prefer to use the term “digital self expression”. And as I wrote almost a year ago in a piece titled “Social Networks are the New Media”…
“To some extent, self-expression should be viewed as a new industry, one that will co-exist alongside other traditional media industries like movies, TV, radio, newspapers and magazines. But in this new industry, the raw materials for the “products” are the people… or as Marshall McLuhan might say, “the people are the message” when it comes to social networks.
So for any player who seeks to enter this industry and become the next social networking phenom, the key is to look at self-expression and social networks as a new medium and to view the audience itself as a new generation of “cultural products”. In the past century, the creation of cultural products was centered in Hollywood. Now, social networks are broadening the scope of cultural media to include “identity production” (a very appropriate term coined by danah boyd), all the while decentralizing the ecosystem out to the edges.
For traditional media companies that are seeking to enter this space (e.g. MTV, Martha Stewart, etc.), it’s critical to follow the audience into the development of this new market by re-focusing core assets that have the capability to deepen the level, and heighten the production value, of self-expression. ”
What Gabler and I both seem to be focusing on is the very real possibility that what is truly disrupting Hollywood is not technology per se, but what the technology is enabling the audience to do and how it’s affecting the public’s “consciousness”. In other words, the future of Hollywood may not ultimately rest on issues like how well the studios transition their business models to adapt to digital distribution schemes or how they handle massive copyright infringement.
Instead, what Hollywood might look like in the year 2020 could have more to do with how studios develop new “products”… much like they did with the advent of television (when they created sitcoms, game shows, movies of the week, etc.). But this time, future Hollywood products will probably have to integrate and leverage the virtually unlimited digital resource of self-expression and social media.
At the end of the day, what we’re talking about is the emergence of a new medium with its own art form. And whether Hollywood will remain at the epicenter of future cultural production is the big question. For the first time, Hollywood should be concerned like never before simply by virtue of the fact that, this time, the means of production are now in the hands of the audience itself. What this implies, at the very least, is that the studios will have to increasingly democratize their business model. What does that mean exactly? Go ask the CEO of Veoh.
GigaOM » Hollywood Disrupted
And what is culprit? You guessed it… the rise of social media! As Gabler elaborates:
“All of this has been hastened by the fact that there is now an instrument to take advantage of the social stratifications. To the extent that the Internet is a niche machine, dividing its users into tiny, self-defined categories, it is providing a challenge to the movies that not even television did, because the Internet addresses a change in consciousness while television simply addressed a change in delivery of content. Television never questioned the very nature of conventional entertainment. The Internet, on the other hand, not only creates niche communities — of young people, beer aficionados, news junkies, Britney Spears fanatics — that seem to obviate the need for the larger community, it plays to another powerful force in modern America and one that also undermines the movies: narcissism. It is certainly no secret that so much of modern media is dedicated to empowering audiences that no longer want to be passive. Already, video games generate more income than movies by centralizing the user and turning him into the protagonist. Popular websites such as Facebook, MySpace and YouTube, in which the user is effectively made into a star and in which content is democratized, get far more hits than movies get audiences. ”
What Gabler calls “narcissism,” I prefer to use the term “digital self expression”. And as I wrote almost a year ago in a piece titled “Social Networks are the New Media”…
“To some extent, self-expression should be viewed as a new industry, one that will co-exist alongside other traditional media industries like movies, TV, radio, newspapers and magazines. But in this new industry, the raw materials for the “products” are the people… or as Marshall McLuhan might say, “the people are the message” when it comes to social networks.
So for any player who seeks to enter this industry and become the next social networking phenom, the key is to look at self-expression and social networks as a new medium and to view the audience itself as a new generation of “cultural products”. In the past century, the creation of cultural products was centered in Hollywood. Now, social networks are broadening the scope of cultural media to include “identity production” (a very appropriate term coined by danah boyd), all the while decentralizing the ecosystem out to the edges.
For traditional media companies that are seeking to enter this space (e.g. MTV, Martha Stewart, etc.), it’s critical to follow the audience into the development of this new market by re-focusing core assets that have the capability to deepen the level, and heighten the production value, of self-expression. ”
What Gabler and I both seem to be focusing on is the very real possibility that what is truly disrupting Hollywood is not technology per se, but what the technology is enabling the audience to do and how it’s affecting the public’s “consciousness”. In other words, the future of Hollywood may not ultimately rest on issues like how well the studios transition their business models to adapt to digital distribution schemes or how they handle massive copyright infringement.
Instead, what Hollywood might look like in the year 2020 could have more to do with how studios develop new “products”… much like they did with the advent of television (when they created sitcoms, game shows, movies of the week, etc.). But this time, future Hollywood products will probably have to integrate and leverage the virtually unlimited digital resource of self-expression and social media.
At the end of the day, what we’re talking about is the emergence of a new medium with its own art form. And whether Hollywood will remain at the epicenter of future cultural production is the big question. For the first time, Hollywood should be concerned like never before simply by virtue of the fact that, this time, the means of production are now in the hands of the audience itself. What this implies, at the very least, is that the studios will have to increasingly democratize their business model. What does that mean exactly? Go ask the CEO of Veoh.
GigaOM » Hollywood Disrupted
Thursday 22 February 2007
How Hitler gained power. - By Clive James - Slate Magazine
The following essay is adapted from Clive James' Cultural Amnesia, a re-examination of intellectuals, artists, and thinkers who helped shape the 20th century. Over the coming weeks, Slate will run an exclusive selection of these essays, going roughly from A to Z, abbreviated for these pages.
You have everything that I lack. You are forging the spiritual tools for the renewal of Germany. I am nothing but a drum and a master of ceremonies. Let's cooperate!—Adolf Hitler at the Juni-Klub, spring 1922, as quoted in Jean Pierre Faye's Langages totalitaires.Adolf HitlerAdolf Hitler (1889–1945) should need no introduction. Statistics suggest, however, that a large proportion of young people now emerging from the educational systems of the Western democracies either don't know who he was or have only a shaky idea of what he did. One of the drawbacks of liberal democracy is thus revealed: Included among its freedoms is the freedom to forget what once threatened its existence. Granted the uncontested opportunity to do so, Hitler would have devoted himself to eliminating every trace of free expression that came within his reach. The awkward question remains of whether, on his part, this propensity precluded any real interest in the humanities. The awkward answer must be that it didn't.
Though it is tempting to think of him as illiterate, Hitler could quote Schopenhauer from memory. His love of music was passionate, to the point where some believed that his admiration for Wagner was a sufficient reason in itself for dismissing that composer from musical history. Hitler the would-be painter never lost interest in the plastic arts. His projected art gallery in his home town of Linz was one of his most dearly cherished dreams for Nazi Europe after the inevitable victory. Above all, Hitler was moved by architecture, which brings us to the central point, because he wasn't just moved by it, he was mad about it. He had no sense of proportion in any of his ostensibly civilized enthusiasms. His interests lacked the human element, so they could never have amounted to a true humanism. But though his connection with the civilized traditions was parodic at best and neurotic always, there was still a connection: In that respect, he stands above Stalin and Mao and should therefore, by the scholar, be handled with even greater caution, because he is far more poisonous.
Many of his more cultivated victims used their learned resources to deny that Hitler had a mental existence. Some of the last aphorisms written by the great Robert Musil were devoted to summarizing the pathogenic nature of Hitler. Beautifully crafted statements, they had no effect on Hitler whatsoever. The finest minds in Europe devoted their best efforts to proving that their mortal enemy had no mind at all. But nothing they said was of any avail. Hitler could be defeated only by armed might: i.e., on his own terms. Whole libraries written to his detriment didn't add up to the effect of a single Russian artillery shell. This ugly fact should be kept in view when we catch ourselves nursing the comforting illusion that there is a natural order to which politics would revert if all contests of belief could be eliminated. There is such a natural order, but it is not benevolent.
Books about Hitler are without number, but after more than 60 years, the first one to read is still Alan Bullock's Hitler: A Study in Tyranny. Familiarity with the events that it recounts should be regarded as an essential prerequisite to the study not just of modern politics but of the whole history of the arts, since its hideously gifted subject first demonstrated that a sufficient concentration of violence could neutralize any amount of culture no matter how widely diffused. It is not possible to be serious about the humanities unless it is admitted that the pacifism widely favored among educated people before World War II very nearly handed a single man, himself something other than a simple Philistine, the means to bring civilization to an end.
Respectably situated in Berlin's Motzstrasse, to the south of the Tiergarten, the Juni-Klub, or June Club (the name breathed defiance at the Treaty of Versailles), was a '20s talking shop for right-wing intellectuals concerned with revolutionary conservatism. The consciously oxymoronic idea of revolutionary conservatism had almost as many forms as it had advocates, who found it easy to mistake their dialectical hubbub for the clanging forge of a new order. Of the 150 members, 30 were present on the afternoon Hitler dropped in. They thought he had come to hear what they had to say, and they found out that he had no intention of listening to any voice but his own. Their scholarly qualifications counted for nothing. Best qualified of all was Arthur Moeller van den Bruck. Before World War I, Moeller had been a translator of Baudelaire, Defoe, De Quincey, and the complete poetry of Edgar Allan Poe, and had written essays on Nietzsche, Strindberg, and others. He knew Paris well and spent time also in London, Sicily, Venice, the Baltic countries, and Russia. For cultivation he was up there with Ernst Jünger, one of Germany's most gifted modern prose writers and likewise a revolutionary conservative.
How Hitler gained power. - By Clive James - Slate Magazine
Monday 19 February 2007
I've signed up to the wonder of e-petitions | Dt Opinion | Opinion | Telegraph
A Digital Democracy ....? Digital Dementia, more like.
--
I am in thrall to a new internet obsession. Since I found it, YouTube, which used to dominate much of my so-called working day, no longer holds sway (well, there are only so many videos of Britney Spears shaving her head that one can take).
Sneezing pandas, plummeting sky-divers, Tony Blair proclaiming to George Bush his "Endless Love": none of the highlights of the online orbit can detain me any longer. Not now that I have embraced the world of the e-petition.
The Government's e-petitioning website has only been in operation since November, but already there is nowhere that holds a better mirror up to the national psyche. In 50 years' time, all historians need do to find out precisely what kind of Britain their forebears inhabited is study the weekly top 10 e-petitions.
advertisement
What more could they learn of our society, for instance, than that 3,626 people have signed up to demand that the Prime Minister stand on his head and juggle ice cream?
Another 3,868 citizens felt moved enough to insist that our elected representatives "replace the national anthem with Gold by Spandau Ballet". And those are the ones that made it to the approved list. Not that the historian should ignore those that get rejected.
Some, such as the several dozen which request that the Prime Minister "resign", "resign now" or "resign forthwith", are disallowed for plain rudeness.
Others, though, are turned down because they plead for legislation rather more specific than general. Such as the one which asked the PM to "end the rules of male primogeniture with regard to succession to the Earldom of Stirling via a Resettlement-by-Letters Patent to the current Lord Stirling". And the name of the person who submitted it? The Earl of Stirling.
Of course, there are petitions up there of rather more pertinence to those outside the earl's immediate family. The one that aims to keep the British Library free of charge, with no budget cuts, is something every civilised citizen should sign.
As is the one that insists the PM "recognise that music and dance should not be restricted by burdensome licensing regulations". I have also added my name to the demand that the Government "provide a reliable train service with adequate capacity at times that travellers wish to make journeys from Swindon to Westbury, Bristol to Severn Beach...".
Not of much immediate geographical relevance to many users of the site, I admit, but its intentions are commended.
Dominating the site right now, however, sitting there like a juggernaut stuck in the Hanger Lane gyratory system, is the petition that asks the Government to shelve its plans for road pricing. At the time of writing, 1,578,405 people had added their names. If you want to join them, you will have to hurry: the petition closes tomorrow.
Even before it does, the Prime Minister has welcomed it as "an opportunity... to have a full debate". He has promised that he will give his answer to it forthwith. If it is anything like those already posted on the site, this will say something like: "Thanks for your petition, which we very much appreciate. However, you are wrong and we will be pressing ahead with our policy, no matter how many people actively publicise their opposition." The petition will then be quietly removed from the list.
And maybe that's the most valuable lesson for us e-petitioning obsessives: we may have the technological wherewithal, but that doesn't mean anyone will pay us any heed.
The e-petition is designed to give the impression of openness and accountability - it "shows that my government is listening" says Mr Blair. But it is entirely illusionary - no more legislative common sense will come out of the site than from those shoeboxes filled with signatures clogging up the bowels of No 10.
Not that a mere detail like total powerlessness is going to stop the determined e-petitioner. After all, where else can a concerned citizen demand that the PM stick his head in a bucket of custard and gargle the national anthem? Just signing feels like therapy.
I've signed up to the wonder of e-petitions Dt Opinion Opinion Telegraph
--
I am in thrall to a new internet obsession. Since I found it, YouTube, which used to dominate much of my so-called working day, no longer holds sway (well, there are only so many videos of Britney Spears shaving her head that one can take).
Sneezing pandas, plummeting sky-divers, Tony Blair proclaiming to George Bush his "Endless Love": none of the highlights of the online orbit can detain me any longer. Not now that I have embraced the world of the e-petition.
The Government's e-petitioning website has only been in operation since November, but already there is nowhere that holds a better mirror up to the national psyche. In 50 years' time, all historians need do to find out precisely what kind of Britain their forebears inhabited is study the weekly top 10 e-petitions.
advertisement
What more could they learn of our society, for instance, than that 3,626 people have signed up to demand that the Prime Minister stand on his head and juggle ice cream?
Another 3,868 citizens felt moved enough to insist that our elected representatives "replace the national anthem with Gold by Spandau Ballet". And those are the ones that made it to the approved list. Not that the historian should ignore those that get rejected.
Some, such as the several dozen which request that the Prime Minister "resign", "resign now" or "resign forthwith", are disallowed for plain rudeness.
Others, though, are turned down because they plead for legislation rather more specific than general. Such as the one which asked the PM to "end the rules of male primogeniture with regard to succession to the Earldom of Stirling via a Resettlement-by-Letters Patent to the current Lord Stirling". And the name of the person who submitted it? The Earl of Stirling.
Of course, there are petitions up there of rather more pertinence to those outside the earl's immediate family. The one that aims to keep the British Library free of charge, with no budget cuts, is something every civilised citizen should sign.
As is the one that insists the PM "recognise that music and dance should not be restricted by burdensome licensing regulations". I have also added my name to the demand that the Government "provide a reliable train service with adequate capacity at times that travellers wish to make journeys from Swindon to Westbury, Bristol to Severn Beach...".
Not of much immediate geographical relevance to many users of the site, I admit, but its intentions are commended.
Dominating the site right now, however, sitting there like a juggernaut stuck in the Hanger Lane gyratory system, is the petition that asks the Government to shelve its plans for road pricing. At the time of writing, 1,578,405 people had added their names. If you want to join them, you will have to hurry: the petition closes tomorrow.
Even before it does, the Prime Minister has welcomed it as "an opportunity... to have a full debate". He has promised that he will give his answer to it forthwith. If it is anything like those already posted on the site, this will say something like: "Thanks for your petition, which we very much appreciate. However, you are wrong and we will be pressing ahead with our policy, no matter how many people actively publicise their opposition." The petition will then be quietly removed from the list.
And maybe that's the most valuable lesson for us e-petitioning obsessives: we may have the technological wherewithal, but that doesn't mean anyone will pay us any heed.
The e-petition is designed to give the impression of openness and accountability - it "shows that my government is listening" says Mr Blair. But it is entirely illusionary - no more legislative common sense will come out of the site than from those shoeboxes filled with signatures clogging up the bowels of No 10.
Not that a mere detail like total powerlessness is going to stop the determined e-petitioner. After all, where else can a concerned citizen demand that the PM stick his head in a bucket of custard and gargle the national anthem? Just signing feels like therapy.
I've signed up to the wonder of e-petitions Dt Opinion Opinion Telegraph
Sunday 18 February 2007
News - Arctic Monkeys
The Arctic Monkeys are undertaking a series of short-notice/no pre-show-publicity small-venue gigs lately (we just missed their hometown - ie, Sheffield, if you didn't already know - gig at the great Leadmill venue, drat - especially 'drat' as we're only 20miles from Sheffield) - this being the classically difficult sophomore album it's good to hear that those who have seen them preview their new material (below) at recent gigs are saying it sounds excellent - a bit heavier than the 1st album, but that's no bad thing.
Very much looking forward to seeing them live this summer - I may be one of the oldest in the audience but what the hell!
Along with the much more obscure (at present) 'The Hair' the Arctic Monkeys really re-kindled my love of contemporary music. Just hope they get around to doing a gig at our mutually favourite football team's ground, Sheffield Wednesday @ Hillsborough.
The place needs some good karma after years of decline on and off the pitch; massive debts, an absurd turnover of managers (10 in 10 years), let alone the haunting memories of the tragic deaths of 96 Liverpool fans (which seems just like yesterday).
One day, maybe - when we're in the Premiership? If so, I won't hold my breath ...
--
Arctic Monkeys are pleased to announce that their new album entitled ‘Favourite Worst Nightmare’, will be released on Monday 23rd April.
The track listing will be:
01. Brianstorm
02. Teddy Picker
03. D is for Dangerous
04. Balaclava
05. Fluorescent Adolescent
06. Only Ones Who Know
07. Do Me a Favour
08. This House Is a Circus
09. If You Were There, Beware
10. The Bad Thing
11. Old Yellow Bricks
12. 505
The first single, 'Brianstorm' will be released on Monday 16th April.
News - Arctic Monkeys
Very much looking forward to seeing them live this summer - I may be one of the oldest in the audience but what the hell!
Along with the much more obscure (at present) 'The Hair' the Arctic Monkeys really re-kindled my love of contemporary music. Just hope they get around to doing a gig at our mutually favourite football team's ground, Sheffield Wednesday @ Hillsborough.
The place needs some good karma after years of decline on and off the pitch; massive debts, an absurd turnover of managers (10 in 10 years), let alone the haunting memories of the tragic deaths of 96 Liverpool fans (which seems just like yesterday).
We shouldn't forget the tragedy of that day and the incompetence that lead to the needless deaths of so many, but I do believe our ground needs a cathartic cleansing to redress the balance/karma. Anyway, I digress ...
One day, maybe - when we're in the Premiership? If so, I won't hold my breath ...
--
Arctic Monkeys are pleased to announce that their new album entitled ‘Favourite Worst Nightmare’, will be released on Monday 23rd April.
The track listing will be:
01. Brianstorm
02. Teddy Picker
03. D is for Dangerous
04. Balaclava
05. Fluorescent Adolescent
06. Only Ones Who Know
07. Do Me a Favour
08. This House Is a Circus
09. If You Were There, Beware
10. The Bad Thing
11. Old Yellow Bricks
12. 505
The first single, 'Brianstorm' will be released on Monday 16th April.
News - Arctic Monkeys
BBC Radio 4 - Factual - Desert Island Discs -Grayson Perry
This week's guest is on as I type - the one that prompted me to gush so much in an earlier entry re: Desert Island Discs ... if and when I have a ridiculously large amount of surplus money I shall be in the queue for one of his works. 
Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the artist Grayson Perry. For more than 20 years his work was broadly unknown outside the narrow confines of the art world.
But in 2003 he became a household name after a collection of his exquisitely ornate pots won him art's most prestigious award, the Turner Prize.
He's described as 'the hottest potter in the world' but newspaper headlines describing his success focused at least as much on his clothes as his art - when he collected the prize he wore a lilac party dress with a bow in his hair.He started dressing in his sister's clothes when he was a child - initially as part of his imaginative games and then for an erotic thrill.
In part, women's clothes represented the tender emotions he was too scared to show in his repressive and sometimes frightening family home. Now, they're a way of controlling how people see him, what kind of attention he attracts and, if nothing else, they're a unique selling point. He acknowledges the debt he owes to his profession; only the arts would tolerate, he says, a transvestite potter from Essex.
His choices include:
Record: Prophecies (Philip Glass)
Book: An art book on Gothic and Renaissance Altar pieces
Luxury: Loads of really good pens and paper
BBC Radio 4 - Factual - Desert Island Discs -Grayson Perry
He's even a fan of The Fall and a 'biker. What more is necessary?
--
--
Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the artist Grayson Perry. For more than 20 years his work was broadly unknown outside the narrow confines of the art world.
But in 2003 he became a household name after a collection of his exquisitely ornate pots won him art's most prestigious award, the Turner Prize.
He's described as 'the hottest potter in the world' but newspaper headlines describing his success focused at least as much on his clothes as his art - when he collected the prize he wore a lilac party dress with a bow in his hair.He started dressing in his sister's clothes when he was a child - initially as part of his imaginative games and then for an erotic thrill.
In part, women's clothes represented the tender emotions he was too scared to show in his repressive and sometimes frightening family home. Now, they're a way of controlling how people see him, what kind of attention he attracts and, if nothing else, they're a unique selling point. He acknowledges the debt he owes to his profession; only the arts would tolerate, he says, a transvestite potter from Essex.
His choices include:
Record: Prophecies (Philip Glass)
Book: An art book on Gothic and Renaissance Altar pieces
Luxury: Loads of really good pens and paper
BBC Radio 4 - Factual - Desert Island Discs -Grayson Perry
Saturday 17 February 2007
AWAKEN THE GIANT WITHIN: 20 steps to build your own video-sharing network - Valleywag
Scarily, it's true ...
--
So you want to build a video sharing network? Of course you do.
Fortunately, it's really easy to launch an awesome and successful video-sharing site these days. A highly placed but necessarily anonymous Internet superstar shares with us the ultimate plan for video fortune.
Just follow these 20 simple steps, and you'll be kitting out your own fleet of Gulfstreams in no time.
Step 1. Never forget: If Xeni Jardin uploads videos of herself to Boing Boing with the logo of your company next to the "play" button, you're going to be rich.
Step 2. Ensure that company founders have cocaine problems or eating disorders. You want them to look like they're going to drop dead at any moment. This will help you sign up advertisers.
Step 3. If and when Xeni Jardin videos are only downloaded 300+ times despite being put on a website that claims 2.2 million subscribers, start promoting your open source policies. This is deeply compelling information for the average watcher of web videos.
Step 4. Mention that you run Ubuntu on a Mac. That way everyone will understand up front that you have no idea what the hell you're doing with technology. It will also prepare your "partners" for massive difficulty in opening your email attachments.
Step 5. If your license agreement is incompatible with Creative Commons and potentially puts the entire movement at risk, make sure you do nothing about it.
Step 6. CONNECT! Hire a skanky, 29-year-old ex-raver chick to be the face of your company. This will help you sign up advertisers.
Step 7. Rush your product out of beta in order to raise additional venture cap funding. Spend the money on booze, blow, and a party.
Step 8. Have the ship party first, then ship your product late -- preferably while the face of your company is partying at Burning Man. Bonus points if she accidentally uploads Burning Man pictures to the company blog.
Step 9. Ensure that your 1.0 product has fewer publisher features than the beta.
Step 10. Keep your beta product up; that way you get stuck maintaining both.
Step 11. Now rewrite your beta product and release it as open source. This will, uh, help draw attention to your, uh, completely different 1.0 product.
Step 12. Widgets, widgets, widgets.
Step 13. Make sure your website and video player are as ugly and invasive as possible.
Step 14. Get rid of two out of three company founders.
Step 15. Ensure that the remaining company founder retains an email address promoting a previously-failed venture.
Step 16. Manipulate someone in Hollywood into getting you an Emmy nomination despite the fact that you cannot serve a 30-second video without a noticeable glitch at the end.
Step 17. Fail to win the Emmy.
Step 18. Manipulate SXSW into having company employees moderate seminars without disclosing their company affiliation.
Step 19. Never forget: accurate metrics are of no value to advertisers or show producers. "Approximately 400,000" gets you into BusinessWeek every time; pesky facts only screw that up.
Step 20. If Ze Frank is using your service to host his program, make sure he does not appear anywhere on your home page. That space is much better used to promote upskirt videos or your deep belief in open source.
AWAKEN THE GIANT WITHIN: 20 steps to build your own video-sharing network - Valleywag
--
So you want to build a video sharing network? Of course you do.
Fortunately, it's really easy to launch an awesome and successful video-sharing site these days. A highly placed but necessarily anonymous Internet superstar shares with us the ultimate plan for video fortune.
Just follow these 20 simple steps, and you'll be kitting out your own fleet of Gulfstreams in no time.
Step 1. Never forget: If Xeni Jardin uploads videos of herself to Boing Boing with the logo of your company next to the "play" button, you're going to be rich.
Step 2. Ensure that company founders have cocaine problems or eating disorders. You want them to look like they're going to drop dead at any moment. This will help you sign up advertisers.
Step 3. If and when Xeni Jardin videos are only downloaded 300+ times despite being put on a website that claims 2.2 million subscribers, start promoting your open source policies. This is deeply compelling information for the average watcher of web videos.
Step 4. Mention that you run Ubuntu on a Mac. That way everyone will understand up front that you have no idea what the hell you're doing with technology. It will also prepare your "partners" for massive difficulty in opening your email attachments.
Step 5. If your license agreement is incompatible with Creative Commons and potentially puts the entire movement at risk, make sure you do nothing about it.
Step 6. CONNECT! Hire a skanky, 29-year-old ex-raver chick to be the face of your company. This will help you sign up advertisers.
Step 7. Rush your product out of beta in order to raise additional venture cap funding. Spend the money on booze, blow, and a party.
Step 8. Have the ship party first, then ship your product late -- preferably while the face of your company is partying at Burning Man. Bonus points if she accidentally uploads Burning Man pictures to the company blog.
Step 9. Ensure that your 1.0 product has fewer publisher features than the beta.
Step 10. Keep your beta product up; that way you get stuck maintaining both.
Step 11. Now rewrite your beta product and release it as open source. This will, uh, help draw attention to your, uh, completely different 1.0 product.
Step 12. Widgets, widgets, widgets.
Step 13. Make sure your website and video player are as ugly and invasive as possible.
Step 14. Get rid of two out of three company founders.
Step 15. Ensure that the remaining company founder retains an email address promoting a previously-failed venture.
Step 16. Manipulate someone in Hollywood into getting you an Emmy nomination despite the fact that you cannot serve a 30-second video without a noticeable glitch at the end.
Step 17. Fail to win the Emmy.
Step 18. Manipulate SXSW into having company employees moderate seminars without disclosing their company affiliation.
Step 19. Never forget: accurate metrics are of no value to advertisers or show producers. "Approximately 400,000" gets you into BusinessWeek every time; pesky facts only screw that up.
Step 20. If Ze Frank is using your service to host his program, make sure he does not appear anywhere on your home page. That space is much better used to promote upskirt videos or your deep belief in open source.
AWAKEN THE GIANT WITHIN: 20 steps to build your own video-sharing network - Valleywag
Friday 16 February 2007
Reconstructing Woody: Entertainment & Culture: vanityfair.com
For bringing us Annie Hall, let alone Manhattan, Allen is well worth reflecting upon ...
--
--
Through scandal, legal battles, and critical censure, Woody Allen keeps adding to an extraordinary film legacy. In his first exhaustive interview in years, Allen talks about his love life, chasing the money to London while protecting his independence, and Match Point, the movie that has brought both box-office redemption and an Oscar nomination.
It's been a long time since Alvy Singer wooed Annie Hall: on December 1, Woody Allen will be 70. But while that may make his boomer audience feel old, he himself isn't giving much ground to the Grim Reaper. You can still set your watch by his production schedule: almost every year for nearly four decades he has written and directed a new picture—the Joyce Carol Oates of the movies—and this year has been no different. He is set to release his latest in December, the excellent Match Point, a moral thriller, featuring Scarlett Johansson, Emily Mortimer, and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, which he shot in London during the summer of 2004.
Reconstructing Woody: Entertainment & Culture: vanityfair.com
It's been a long time since Alvy Singer wooed Annie Hall: on December 1, Woody Allen will be 70. But while that may make his boomer audience feel old, he himself isn't giving much ground to the Grim Reaper. You can still set your watch by his production schedule: almost every year for nearly four decades he has written and directed a new picture—the Joyce Carol Oates of the movies—and this year has been no different. He is set to release his latest in December, the excellent Match Point, a moral thriller, featuring Scarlett Johansson, Emily Mortimer, and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, which he shot in London during the summer of 2004.
Reconstructing Woody: Entertainment & Culture: vanityfair.com
How to Change the World: The World Map of Happiness
Eh? Having worked in/spent a lot of time in many of those counturies - in both a professional and personal context - i very much beg to differ! As ever, there are "lies, damn lies and statistics" ...
how can one apply binary metrics to subjective happiness? This listing clearly reflects the oxymoron therein. Nonsense.
See some comments adjacent to each relevant country where I think a comment is warranted; apologies to the academic who earnestly produced this list(!).
--
The World Map of Happiness
Adrian G. White, a psychologist at the University of Leicester, produced a “world map of happiness.” The study reflects data from UNESCO, the CIA, the New Economics Foundation, the WHO, the Veenhoven Database, the Latinbarometer, the Afrobarometer, and the UNHDR.
The twenty happiest countries are:
Denmark A jolly lot in general, yes, but with a maudlin side also.
Switzerland No way - fine people but 'happy'?
Austria Ditto.
Iceland
The Bahamas
Finland See Denmark.
Sweden See Austria.
Bhutan
Brunei
Canada Maybe.
Ireland Maybe.
Luxembourg Nope.
Costa Rica
Malta Yes.
The Netherlands Yes.
Antigua and Barbuda
Malaysia
New Zealand
Norway See Denmark.
The Seychelles
Other rankings: USA (23), France (62), China (82) Japan (90), India (125). Fortunately, I am married to a Danish woman.
How to Change the World: The World Map of Happiness
how can one apply binary metrics to subjective happiness? This listing clearly reflects the oxymoron therein. Nonsense.
See some comments adjacent to each relevant country where I think a comment is warranted; apologies to the academic who earnestly produced this list(!).
--
The World Map of Happiness
Adrian G. White, a psychologist at the University of Leicester, produced a “world map of happiness.” The study reflects data from UNESCO, the CIA, the New Economics Foundation, the WHO, the Veenhoven Database, the Latinbarometer, the Afrobarometer, and the UNHDR.
The twenty happiest countries are:
Denmark A jolly lot in general, yes, but with a maudlin side also.
Switzerland No way - fine people but 'happy'?
Austria Ditto.
Iceland
The Bahamas
Finland See Denmark.
Sweden See Austria.
Bhutan
Brunei
Canada Maybe.
Ireland Maybe.
Luxembourg Nope.
Costa Rica
Malta Yes.
The Netherlands Yes.
Antigua and Barbuda
Malaysia
New Zealand
Norway See Denmark.
The Seychelles
Other rankings: USA (23), France (62), China (82) Japan (90), India (125). Fortunately, I am married to a Danish woman.
How to Change the World: The World Map of Happiness
Sting, re-assessed. - By Stephen Metcalf - Slate Magazine
Once an angry punk, always an angry punk ...
--
"Fucking horrible man," Paul Weller, late of the Jam and the Style Council, once fulminated about him. "No edge, no attitude, no nothing." Bob Geldof, ostensibly a friend, has labeled him a "Geordie twat." Unkindness accrues easily to Gordon Matthew Sumner, the musician, actor, activist, and memoirist better known as Sting. Unfairly? Let's say not wholly uninvited. Why, for instance, would someone who came of musical age in the punk era, alongside acts that aspired to take the piss out of absolutely everything, work so tirelessly to put the piss back in? "At this moment," Sting mooned in his autobiography, Broken Music (2003), about a flower he espied on the Amazon floor, "I am led to an understanding that not only must such tiny, beautiful and delicate living things be charged with love, but also the inanimate stones that surround them, everything giving and receiving, reflecting and absorbing, resisting and yielding." Sermons in stones, ghosts in machines, Lite FM in a burgundy turtleneck—it commands a kind of silent awe. And it raises anew the ancient riddle: How could a Geordie twat like Sting have fronted a band as great as the Police?
Sting, re-assessed. - By Stephen Metcalf - Slate Magazine
--
"Fucking horrible man," Paul Weller, late of the Jam and the Style Council, once fulminated about him. "No edge, no attitude, no nothing." Bob Geldof, ostensibly a friend, has labeled him a "Geordie twat." Unkindness accrues easily to Gordon Matthew Sumner, the musician, actor, activist, and memoirist better known as Sting. Unfairly? Let's say not wholly uninvited. Why, for instance, would someone who came of musical age in the punk era, alongside acts that aspired to take the piss out of absolutely everything, work so tirelessly to put the piss back in? "At this moment," Sting mooned in his autobiography, Broken Music (2003), about a flower he espied on the Amazon floor, "I am led to an understanding that not only must such tiny, beautiful and delicate living things be charged with love, but also the inanimate stones that surround them, everything giving and receiving, reflecting and absorbing, resisting and yielding." Sermons in stones, ghosts in machines, Lite FM in a burgundy turtleneck—it commands a kind of silent awe. And it raises anew the ancient riddle: How could a Geordie twat like Sting have fronted a band as great as the Police?
Sting, re-assessed. - By Stephen Metcalf - Slate Magazine
The BRIT Awards 2007 • Features
The Brits does not have quite as much glamour and gravitas as the Grammys but I rather like its somewhat chaotic, amateur and anarchistic tone - and lack of reverence to the music industry that spawned it. In the case of the Brits this year, the host, Russell Brand (below), is perfectly suited to the occasion. Typing this makes me recall a very cold night in New York when I decided to wander down to Madison Sq Gardens to watch the Limos arrive and decant the 'stars' for that year's Grammys - the place was awash with screaming girls; I felt rather out of place ... for me, the Brits encapsulates what music should be about.
Music and glamour? Not for me - leave that to Hollywood.
ps, if you never saw the last live airing of the Brits that Russell is referring to - well, you missed a landmark in broadcasting incompetence. It was splendidly hysterical in its utter rubbishness.
In fact it was Very British! Don't get too professional, guys ...
--
“The last time the BRIT Awards was transmitted live,” says Russell Brand, “was in 1989, when Sam Fox and Mick Fleetwood presented. If I can capture half of the professionalism of that night, I’ll be happy!” He grins, “I just don’t know which one of them to call for tips first…”
Of course, 1989 was a bit of a blip in BRITs history, when it definitely did NOT go alright on the night. There’s a lot of pressure, therefore, riding on this year’s BRITs host - the tousle-haired Essex cad, Russell Brand.
A veteran of live talk shows, such as Big Brother’s Big Mouth and The Russell Brand Show, the controversial stand-up relishes the opportunity to take the reigns on the big show. “And I love that it’s live,” he grins. “I do live. In fact, trust me. I’m even doing this interview live right now…”
The BRIT Awards 2007 • Features
Music and glamour? Not for me - leave that to Hollywood.
ps, if you never saw the last live airing of the Brits that Russell is referring to - well, you missed a landmark in broadcasting incompetence. It was splendidly hysterical in its utter rubbishness.
In fact it was Very British! Don't get too professional, guys ...
--
“The last time the BRIT Awards was transmitted live,” says Russell Brand, “was in 1989, when Sam Fox and Mick Fleetwood presented. If I can capture half of the professionalism of that night, I’ll be happy!” He grins, “I just don’t know which one of them to call for tips first…”
Of course, 1989 was a bit of a blip in BRITs history, when it definitely did NOT go alright on the night. There’s a lot of pressure, therefore, riding on this year’s BRITs host - the tousle-haired Essex cad, Russell Brand.
A veteran of live talk shows, such as Big Brother’s Big Mouth and The Russell Brand Show, the controversial stand-up relishes the opportunity to take the reigns on the big show. “And I love that it’s live,” he grins. “I do live. In fact, trust me. I’m even doing this interview live right now…”
The BRIT Awards 2007 • Features
WIRED Blogs: Table of Malcontents
Well, if it's a patch on the wonderful 'Brazil' it will be well worth watching ...
ps, apologies for the excessive use of 'fascinating' in my earlier posting re: Desert Island Discs. I was clearly rather excited ...
--
ps, apologies for the excessive use of 'fascinating' in my earlier posting re: Desert Island Discs. I was clearly rather excited ...
--
The newest Terry Gilliam movie is best described as nightmarish. With no particular point, the end of the film evokes relief and embarrassment, as if you have just finished witnessing Gilliam pass an enormous kidney stone. One feels the urge to let go his clammy hand, pat him gently and ask him if he feels better.
The film stars young Jodelle Ferland (Silent Hill) as Jeliza-Rose, daughter of an aging, dysfunctional, but still affectionate smack addict, Noah. Jeff Bridges, reprising the Dude with harder drugs, plays Noah with an intense sympathy--the most engaging and intriguing member of the cast. Jeliza's unnamed (and ambiguously fat/pregnant) mother (Jennifer Tilly), spends the eight minutes prior to her heroin overdose alternately deprecating and cuddling Jeliza, and cramming handfuls of chocolate into her smeared, sad mouth. Then she dies in a grotesque splay, and it is all Jeliza can do to keep Noah from setting the horrible woman on fire.
The girl's life consists of playing nursemaid to her junkie parents and maintaining a shrill, running narration by her variously-personified disembodied doll heads. Ferland does all the voice acting for the dolls, which take on greater independence as the film goes on. Each of them possesses uncomfortably differentiated accents, and eventually Jeliza's mouth ceases to move at all when the dolls speak.
WIRED Blogs: Table of Malcontents
Thursday 15 February 2007
BBC Radio 4 - Factual - Desert Island Discs -Paul Abbott
If you don't already know about "Desert Island Discs", you should try and catch it - even a seemingly dull, academic guest is more often than not a fascinating voyage around the human soul ... last week's guest was fascinating (see below), even though I don't care for his work. It's that kind of show.
Next week's guest is the transvestite potter, Grayson Perry - should be fascinating - I love his work and admire his chutzpah as much as his talent ...
--
Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the screen writer Paul Abbott. He has written some of the most controversial and successful television programmes of the past decade. Shameless, Clocking Off and State of Play all flowed from his pen and have won him bags of awards.
But he was driven to write as a response to the chaotic and traumatic childhood he’d suffered. One of eight children, both parents had left the family home by the time he was eleven, leaving his older sister to bring them up. They had a near feral existence, and lived, says Paul, like rats.
At fifteen he attempted suicide and ended up in a psychiatric ward. After that, without wanting to or really being aware it was happening, he wrote as a way of letting out the rage he felt inside him. He quickly was able to turn this writing into short stories, radio plays and film scripts and to sell them. Now he is credited with making television the 'new National Theatre'. But it's not his greatest achievement - he is proudest of his successful marriage to Saskia, his wife of eighteen years, and of their two children.
Record: Town Called Malice
Book: Complete works of Arthur Miller
Luxury: Writing pad and pencils
Full list of his selected records and a great overview of past guests at: BBC Radio 4 - Factual - Desert Island Discs -Paul Abbott
Next week's guest is the transvestite potter, Grayson Perry - should be fascinating - I love his work and admire his chutzpah as much as his talent ...
--
Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the screen writer Paul Abbott. He has written some of the most controversial and successful television programmes of the past decade. Shameless, Clocking Off and State of Play all flowed from his pen and have won him bags of awards.
But he was driven to write as a response to the chaotic and traumatic childhood he’d suffered. One of eight children, both parents had left the family home by the time he was eleven, leaving his older sister to bring them up. They had a near feral existence, and lived, says Paul, like rats.
At fifteen he attempted suicide and ended up in a psychiatric ward. After that, without wanting to or really being aware it was happening, he wrote as a way of letting out the rage he felt inside him. He quickly was able to turn this writing into short stories, radio plays and film scripts and to sell them. Now he is credited with making television the 'new National Theatre'. But it's not his greatest achievement - he is proudest of his successful marriage to Saskia, his wife of eighteen years, and of their two children.
Record: Town Called Malice
Book: Complete works of Arthur Miller
Luxury: Writing pad and pencils
Full list of his selected records and a great overview of past guests at: BBC Radio 4 - Factual - Desert Island Discs -Paul Abbott
Boost your self-esteem - Lifehacker
Life-balance blog The Ririan Project offers 22 tips on improving your self-esteem. For example, make a list of your accomplishments:
Think of times when you did something that you thought that never could do but managed to pull off successfully. Read this list often. While reviewing it, close your eyes and recreate the feelings of satisfaction and joy you experienced when you first attained each success.
You've probably heard most of these chestnuts before, but overall this is an excellent list with plenty of sound wisdom. I dare you not to feel better about yourself after trying just a few of the tips. — Rick Broida
Wake Up Feeling Great With These 22 Tips for High Self-Esteem [The Ririan Project via Dumb Little Man]
Boost your self-esteem - Lifehacker
Think of times when you did something that you thought that never could do but managed to pull off successfully. Read this list often. While reviewing it, close your eyes and recreate the feelings of satisfaction and joy you experienced when you first attained each success.
You've probably heard most of these chestnuts before, but overall this is an excellent list with plenty of sound wisdom. I dare you not to feel better about yourself after trying just a few of the tips. — Rick Broida
Wake Up Feeling Great With These 22 Tips for High Self-Esteem [The Ririan Project via Dumb Little Man]
Boost your self-esteem - Lifehacker
Wednesday 14 February 2007
BBC - Top Gear - Episode Archive - Series 9 - Episode 3
The erstwhile amusing "Top Gear" does still have its moments; last week's episode (detailed below) was a stark contrast in the different perceptions in irony/humour between rather upper-middle-class, overgrown middle-aged British motoring journalists/entertainers and some parts of America's Deep South - namely, Alabama.
This was actually pretty depressing/scary watching - for that, congratulations to Top Gear (it made a change to yet another inane review of a $200k supercar) - to witness such brain-dead bigotry and aggression when faced with ironic (alebit juvenile) humour was thought-provoking. I have never experienced it on any of my countless business/personal trips to America - still, I can't recall ever visiting Alabama.
And no, from my perspective at least, this isn't a bigoted and patronising lampooning of Americans - there are as many such humour-less bigots in good old England; not that the Top Gear crew (especially Clarkson) would acknowledge that ... in fact, Borat would make a fine addition to the Top Gear team, thinking about it.
--
On land-of-the-free Top Gear, we spent the whole show in the good ole US of A, as we sent Jeremy, Richard and James across the pond on a massive interstate road-trip.
Our presenters touched down in sunny Miami amid a heady cocktail of bikini-clad beach babes, colourful art deco buildings and drug-related gangland violence. They were each given an extremely tight budget of $1000 and told to go off and buy themselves a car in which to embark on an epic road trip, stopping along the way to compete in a series of challenges.
It turned out that finding a car for that sort of money is pretty tricky. Especially if your picky about such things as bullet holes in the windscreen or shrubs growing through the radiator grille. Eventually, though, Jeremy managed to lay hands on a Chevrolet Camaro, Richard landed himself a very utilitarian Dodge Ram pick-up, and James turned up in a Cadillac as large and wobbly as Liberace's waterbed. The target destination was revealed to be New Orleans, which was over 700 extremely hot, red neck-strewn miles away.
The first stop along the way was the Moroso Motorsports Park, which is unusual in the US because it's a racetrack that has both left and right hand turns. Each car was put through its paces by none other than the Stig's super-sized US cousin.
The next challenge was simply to camp out for the evening. There was, however, a small catch - they were only allowed to eat road kill. After several hours of foraging, all they managed to turn up was one slightly mouldy squirrel.
The next morning the presenters faced their final challenge: to drive their cars across Alabama without getting shot. This might sound relatively easy, but before they set off they were allowed to paint slogans on each other's cars. James ended up with 'Hilary for president' scrawled along the side of his Caddy, Jeremy's Camaro had the words 'Country and western is rubbish', and Richard's pick-up bore the legend 'Man love rules OK'. These sentiments didn't go down too well with some of the locals and, to cut a long story short, we were lucky to make it to New Orleans with our lives.
BBC - Top Gear - Episode Archive - Series 9 - Episode 3
Women's Intuition at Work
Lots has been written lately about the difference between men and women in business -- from their leadership styles to the amount of VC financing they attract (less than 10% of all venture capital funding.)
Margaret Heffernan’s new book, “How She Does It: How Women Entrepreneurs are Changing the Rules of Business Success” adds an interesting observation to the conversation.
Women, she says, are increasingly successful in business because they’re hard-wired to capture the zeitgeist. Speaking at a breakfast meeting at the Cornell Club in Manhattan last week, Heffernan, who has been the CEO of five different businesses in the US and the UK, said that women have a unique ability “to connect the dots,” to see patterns in masses of information.
“Women’s brains are like street sweepers,” she says. Every day, women are out there canvassing their environment, from the office to the school to the mall to the kitchen to the church to the supermarket, and on and on, taking in information, often in a commercial context. The extent of women’s purchasing power has been well documented, of course: 88% of all retail purchases, 89% of bank accounts, more than 50% of credit card use, etc. While they're shopping, they're also sucking up dust balls of data, like some crazed Roomba of the marketplace.
That makes women “deeply and often chaotically informed,” Heffernan says. It also enables them to understand the market on a visceral level, as they notice new products, trends, tastes, and failures. And, it enables the savvy ones to see market opportunities.
Eileen Fisher did just that when she noticed that women’s lives were getting more complex, and they wanted clothes that would work well for the different parts of their lives.
Carol Latham, a physical chemist, noticed many years ago that the thing that prevented computers from getting smaller was the problem of heat build-up. Her bosses pooh poohed her insight. So she left to form her own company, Thermagon, to make polymer semiconductors. Soon, Intel was on the phone, asking if they could use some of her company’s products to help with the heat issue on the Pentium chip.
Calling this ability ‘women’s intuition’ degrades how important it can be in a business context. Daniel Goleman, the author of Emotional Intelligence, analyzed research on hundreds of top executives at fifteen global companies. The one cognitive ability that distinguished star performers from their less accomplished peers was their knack for pattern recognition, he says. That’s women’s intuition in a Hugo Boss suit.
“It’s the ‘big picture’ thinking that allows leaders to pick out the meaningful trends from the welter of information around them, and to think far into the future,” he says.
This should not be confused with market research, Heffernan says, which is always historical. Capturing the zeitgeist is about the future, an inexact – but invaluable – ability to sense where the world is going before it gets there.
No woman business owner would tell you that intuition trumps discipline, focus, and hard work. But leaven those business necessities with a dash of old fashioned intuition, and you’ve got a potentially powerful engine for innovation.
Women's Intuition at Work
Margaret Heffernan’s new book, “How She Does It: How Women Entrepreneurs are Changing the Rules of Business Success” adds an interesting observation to the conversation.
Women, she says, are increasingly successful in business because they’re hard-wired to capture the zeitgeist. Speaking at a breakfast meeting at the Cornell Club in Manhattan last week, Heffernan, who has been the CEO of five different businesses in the US and the UK, said that women have a unique ability “to connect the dots,” to see patterns in masses of information.
“Women’s brains are like street sweepers,” she says. Every day, women are out there canvassing their environment, from the office to the school to the mall to the kitchen to the church to the supermarket, and on and on, taking in information, often in a commercial context. The extent of women’s purchasing power has been well documented, of course: 88% of all retail purchases, 89% of bank accounts, more than 50% of credit card use, etc. While they're shopping, they're also sucking up dust balls of data, like some crazed Roomba of the marketplace.
That makes women “deeply and often chaotically informed,” Heffernan says. It also enables them to understand the market on a visceral level, as they notice new products, trends, tastes, and failures. And, it enables the savvy ones to see market opportunities.
Eileen Fisher did just that when she noticed that women’s lives were getting more complex, and they wanted clothes that would work well for the different parts of their lives.
Carol Latham, a physical chemist, noticed many years ago that the thing that prevented computers from getting smaller was the problem of heat build-up. Her bosses pooh poohed her insight. So she left to form her own company, Thermagon, to make polymer semiconductors. Soon, Intel was on the phone, asking if they could use some of her company’s products to help with the heat issue on the Pentium chip.
Calling this ability ‘women’s intuition’ degrades how important it can be in a business context. Daniel Goleman, the author of Emotional Intelligence, analyzed research on hundreds of top executives at fifteen global companies. The one cognitive ability that distinguished star performers from their less accomplished peers was their knack for pattern recognition, he says. That’s women’s intuition in a Hugo Boss suit.
“It’s the ‘big picture’ thinking that allows leaders to pick out the meaningful trends from the welter of information around them, and to think far into the future,” he says.
This should not be confused with market research, Heffernan says, which is always historical. Capturing the zeitgeist is about the future, an inexact – but invaluable – ability to sense where the world is going before it gets there.
No woman business owner would tell you that intuition trumps discipline, focus, and hard work. But leaven those business necessities with a dash of old fashioned intuition, and you’ve got a potentially powerful engine for innovation.
Women's Intuition at Work
Is Radio Still Radio if There’s Video? - New York Times
Ted Stryker, a D.J. at KROQ in Los Angeles, considers it a perk of the job to wear shorts and T-shirts to work. But last Sunday as he dressed for the Grammy Awards, he pulled out his best blazer and a flashy belt buckle, knowing three video cameras would stream live coverage of his show to the Web sites of 147 CBS radio stations.
“What’s great about radio is no one knows what you’re wearing,” Mr. Stryker said by telephone as he made his way through the throng at the Grammys. “I wanted to make myself a little bit more presentable.”
Mr. Stryker, who has done some TV work in the past, said that to create his best radio voice, he often must contort his face in embarrassing ways.
“It’s so different doing radio compared to TV,” he said. “Who knows what faces I make when I’m talking on the radio? I hope I’m not making the same faces today.”
The nation’s commercial radio stations have seen the future, and it is in, of all things, video. As a result, the stereotype of a silken-voiced jockey like Mr. Stryker, slumped and disheveled in the studio chair, may never be the same.
Across the country, radio stations are putting up video fare on their Web sites, ranging from a simple camera in the broadcast booth to exclusive coverage of events like the Super Bowl to music videos, news clips and Web-only musical performances.
“This is no longer the age of ‘having a face for radio,’ ” said Dianna Jason, the senior director of marketing and promotions at Power 106, a Los Angeles hip-hop radio station. “This is a visual medium now.”
Audiences in Los Angeles, for example, will be able to tune in today to Power 106 for an annual Valentine’s Day event called “Trash Your Ex,” in which jilted listeners are invited to put mementos from past loves in a giant wood chipper — and to let it whir while the disc jockey, Big Boy, urges them on. And for the first time, audiences everywhere will be able to watch streamed video of the event, to be held in a parking lot in Pasadena, on the Web site power106.com.
Whereas video was once said to have killed the radio star — according to the pop song by the Buggles that was the first video shown on MTV in 1981 — it is now emerging as an unlikely savior for an industry facing an array of challenges.
In the age of YouTube and the radio talk show hosts Howard Stern and Don Imus as television stalwarts, this might not seem all that remarkable, except that the radio industry has been singularly tardy in embracing the interactive age.
But now many of the largest radio companies are scrambling to stay relevant as their listeners’ attention is drawn in many directions — iPods, cellphones, satellite radio and various streaming and downloading musical offerings from companies like Yahoo and AOL. “A lot of our stations are starting to embrace video and generate new revenue streams,” said Joel Hollander, the chief executive of CBS Radio, the nation’s second-largest radio company, after Clear Channel Communications. “I hope video helps the radio star. Maybe radio will save the video star?”
More than 90 percent of Americans still listen to traditional radio. But the amount of time they tune in over the course of a week has fallen by 14 percent over the last decade, according to Arbitron ratings.
Industry revenues are flat, and the Bloomberg index of radio stocks is down some 40 percent over the last three years.
Reflecting the investor malaise, a group of private equity companies has proposed buying Clear Channel Communications and taking it private.
Video now makes up only a tiny fraction of the $20 billion a year that radio generates in advertising sales. But it could represent a much-needed new source of growth in a rapidly expanding online video market that everyone from Google to newspapers to broadcast television wants to be in.
Radio executives and personalities say their video efforts will be different because they capitalize on radio’s traditional strength in using on-air personalities and local events to draw in listeners.
Taking a cue from YouTube and the rise of user-generated video, a polished, TV-quality product is often not the objective. Another Power 106 video effort featured a staff member, dressed like a shrub, jumping out of a planter to surprise visitors to the station’s office on Halloween.
An alternative rock station, 94.7 FM in Portland, Ore., last fall began a “Bootleg Video” series in which a listener is lent a video camera to record a clip of a local performance by a hot band like the Killers for the Web site. “Sometimes it’s a little shaky, but we want that,” said Mark Hamilton, manager at the station, which is owned by Entercom Communications. “We don’t want it to be perfect.”
The Web site for the radio station WFLZ in Tampa, Fla., features a video series called “Naked,” on the lives of its hosts away from the microphone. “I’m not very pretty today,” one of the station’s disc jockeys, Ashlee Reid, says sheepishly on the latest installment as she arrives at work and realizes the cameras are rolling before bantering with a colleague about chest hair.
Ms. Reid, who is 26, said being videotaped was odd, but in the year that the radio station has been producing monthly installments of the show for downloading, it has not yet caused her and her colleagues to alter their hair or wardrobe. “Maybe we should, but we don’t,” she said.
Similarly, producers for Adam Carolla, the Los Angeles morning host whose program is carried on many CBS Radio stations, regularly record vérité clips featuring Mr. Carolla and a co-host, Danny Bonaduce, for posting on the Web.
The nation’s biggest radio companies are also doing slicker productions, like Mr. Stryker’s Grammy show, that try to capitalize on their size and reach.
Clear Channel, whose Internet efforts are led by Evan Harrison, an executive vice president, has elaborate video programming available on the Web sites of its 1,200 stations, including Tampa’s 933FLZ.com, where “Naked” is featured. Clear Channel has made some 6,000 music videos available for downloading online, but has also been producing original video content that individual stations can feature on their Web sites and disc jockeys can promote on the air.
These programs include “Stripped,” a series of taped performances by artists like Young Jeezy and Nelly Furtado that are often acoustic or done in small clubs. The company has also been producing “Video 6 Pack” in which bands like Fall Out Boy appear as hosts of their own program and play videos they like.
According to comScore Media Metrix, Clear Channel sites ranked sixth in December among music Web sites, behind MTV, AOL, Yahoo, MySpace and Artistdirect.
Radio industry executives stressed that, so far, their video efforts could be considered experimental and only one facet — along with blogs and audio podcasts and a nascent service called HD Radio — of how the industry is adapting for the Internet age.
2 Next Page »
Is Radio Still Radio if There’s Video? - New York Times
“What’s great about radio is no one knows what you’re wearing,” Mr. Stryker said by telephone as he made his way through the throng at the Grammys. “I wanted to make myself a little bit more presentable.”
Mr. Stryker, who has done some TV work in the past, said that to create his best radio voice, he often must contort his face in embarrassing ways.
“It’s so different doing radio compared to TV,” he said. “Who knows what faces I make when I’m talking on the radio? I hope I’m not making the same faces today.”
The nation’s commercial radio stations have seen the future, and it is in, of all things, video. As a result, the stereotype of a silken-voiced jockey like Mr. Stryker, slumped and disheveled in the studio chair, may never be the same.
Across the country, radio stations are putting up video fare on their Web sites, ranging from a simple camera in the broadcast booth to exclusive coverage of events like the Super Bowl to music videos, news clips and Web-only musical performances.
“This is no longer the age of ‘having a face for radio,’ ” said Dianna Jason, the senior director of marketing and promotions at Power 106, a Los Angeles hip-hop radio station. “This is a visual medium now.”
Audiences in Los Angeles, for example, will be able to tune in today to Power 106 for an annual Valentine’s Day event called “Trash Your Ex,” in which jilted listeners are invited to put mementos from past loves in a giant wood chipper — and to let it whir while the disc jockey, Big Boy, urges them on. And for the first time, audiences everywhere will be able to watch streamed video of the event, to be held in a parking lot in Pasadena, on the Web site power106.com.
Whereas video was once said to have killed the radio star — according to the pop song by the Buggles that was the first video shown on MTV in 1981 — it is now emerging as an unlikely savior for an industry facing an array of challenges.
In the age of YouTube and the radio talk show hosts Howard Stern and Don Imus as television stalwarts, this might not seem all that remarkable, except that the radio industry has been singularly tardy in embracing the interactive age.
But now many of the largest radio companies are scrambling to stay relevant as their listeners’ attention is drawn in many directions — iPods, cellphones, satellite radio and various streaming and downloading musical offerings from companies like Yahoo and AOL. “A lot of our stations are starting to embrace video and generate new revenue streams,” said Joel Hollander, the chief executive of CBS Radio, the nation’s second-largest radio company, after Clear Channel Communications. “I hope video helps the radio star. Maybe radio will save the video star?”
More than 90 percent of Americans still listen to traditional radio. But the amount of time they tune in over the course of a week has fallen by 14 percent over the last decade, according to Arbitron ratings.
Industry revenues are flat, and the Bloomberg index of radio stocks is down some 40 percent over the last three years.
Reflecting the investor malaise, a group of private equity companies has proposed buying Clear Channel Communications and taking it private.
Video now makes up only a tiny fraction of the $20 billion a year that radio generates in advertising sales. But it could represent a much-needed new source of growth in a rapidly expanding online video market that everyone from Google to newspapers to broadcast television wants to be in.
Radio executives and personalities say their video efforts will be different because they capitalize on radio’s traditional strength in using on-air personalities and local events to draw in listeners.
Taking a cue from YouTube and the rise of user-generated video, a polished, TV-quality product is often not the objective. Another Power 106 video effort featured a staff member, dressed like a shrub, jumping out of a planter to surprise visitors to the station’s office on Halloween.
An alternative rock station, 94.7 FM in Portland, Ore., last fall began a “Bootleg Video” series in which a listener is lent a video camera to record a clip of a local performance by a hot band like the Killers for the Web site. “Sometimes it’s a little shaky, but we want that,” said Mark Hamilton, manager at the station, which is owned by Entercom Communications. “We don’t want it to be perfect.”
The Web site for the radio station WFLZ in Tampa, Fla., features a video series called “Naked,” on the lives of its hosts away from the microphone. “I’m not very pretty today,” one of the station’s disc jockeys, Ashlee Reid, says sheepishly on the latest installment as she arrives at work and realizes the cameras are rolling before bantering with a colleague about chest hair.
Ms. Reid, who is 26, said being videotaped was odd, but in the year that the radio station has been producing monthly installments of the show for downloading, it has not yet caused her and her colleagues to alter their hair or wardrobe. “Maybe we should, but we don’t,” she said.
Similarly, producers for Adam Carolla, the Los Angeles morning host whose program is carried on many CBS Radio stations, regularly record vérité clips featuring Mr. Carolla and a co-host, Danny Bonaduce, for posting on the Web.
The nation’s biggest radio companies are also doing slicker productions, like Mr. Stryker’s Grammy show, that try to capitalize on their size and reach.
Clear Channel, whose Internet efforts are led by Evan Harrison, an executive vice president, has elaborate video programming available on the Web sites of its 1,200 stations, including Tampa’s 933FLZ.com, where “Naked” is featured. Clear Channel has made some 6,000 music videos available for downloading online, but has also been producing original video content that individual stations can feature on their Web sites and disc jockeys can promote on the air.
These programs include “Stripped,” a series of taped performances by artists like Young Jeezy and Nelly Furtado that are often acoustic or done in small clubs. The company has also been producing “Video 6 Pack” in which bands like Fall Out Boy appear as hosts of their own program and play videos they like.
According to comScore Media Metrix, Clear Channel sites ranked sixth in December among music Web sites, behind MTV, AOL, Yahoo, MySpace and Artistdirect.
Radio industry executives stressed that, so far, their video efforts could be considered experimental and only one facet — along with blogs and audio podcasts and a nascent service called HD Radio — of how the industry is adapting for the Internet age.
2 Next Page »
Is Radio Still Radio if There’s Video? - New York Times
How do we keep up? « Scobleizer - Tech Geek Blogger
Aggregation of same-news feed-items of course compounds the problem (and I am guilty of that in my own blog/s and subsequent feeds generated) so one has to filter one's feeds accordingly to ensure minimal overlap; also, this is just the start - imagine what it will be like when more and more of our interests are delivered to us via RSS. However, by that time the readers will have improved accordingly, to be heuristic for example, I am sure. Still, it's a hell of a lot better than mindless web-surfing and ploughing through yet another HTML email, inbetween all the spam email and viruses, lame jokes forwarded on to you, etc, etc.
I haven't had more than a few days break since I really started using RSS in earnest, and as I receive an average of 350 feed items per 24hrs, it'll be interesting when I do take an extended break - I might miss that major bit of news I was looking for. Still, we will cross that bridge when we come to it.
As an aside, of that 350 feed items average per 24hrs (from some 50 feeds) I am getting an average of 5% of items of interest to me per 24hrs. So, there's lots of room for improvement, yet .... ;-)
What's the ratio for other people here? Will give us a good indicator of how much room for improvement we have.
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I got up early to read feeds and do email. I started at 5:45 a.m. and it’s now 7:26 a.m. and I still didn’t get through all my feeds. But, worse, is what I did find: dozens of new products, new companies, new phones (Gizmodo and Engadget are going crazy posting phone news, I’ve kept most of that off of my link blog). And even a couple of fun cat photos. Heheh.
Anyway, how do we keep up with this flow that is coming through the blogs? It’s much easier to build a company now than it was in the 1990s, plus access to capital is there again, so that leads to tons of new companies and a LOT of news. What does this lead to? Risk for new companies because the chances that a new company will be able to get adoption/build audience and community is very small. There’s simply too much out there to pay attention to
How do we keep up? « Scobleizer - Tech Geek Blogger
I haven't had more than a few days break since I really started using RSS in earnest, and as I receive an average of 350 feed items per 24hrs, it'll be interesting when I do take an extended break - I might miss that major bit of news I was looking for. Still, we will cross that bridge when we come to it.
As an aside, of that 350 feed items average per 24hrs (from some 50 feeds) I am getting an average of 5% of items of interest to me per 24hrs. So, there's lots of room for improvement, yet .... ;-)
What's the ratio for other people here? Will give us a good indicator of how much room for improvement we have.
--
I got up early to read feeds and do email. I started at 5:45 a.m. and it’s now 7:26 a.m. and I still didn’t get through all my feeds. But, worse, is what I did find: dozens of new products, new companies, new phones (Gizmodo and Engadget are going crazy posting phone news, I’ve kept most of that off of my link blog). And even a couple of fun cat photos. Heheh.
Anyway, how do we keep up with this flow that is coming through the blogs? It’s much easier to build a company now than it was in the 1990s, plus access to capital is there again, so that leads to tons of new companies and a LOT of news. What does this lead to? Risk for new companies because the chances that a new company will be able to get adoption/build audience and community is very small. There’s simply too much out there to pay attention to
How do we keep up? « Scobleizer - Tech Geek Blogger
Tuesday 13 February 2007
ODDPODZ
10 Steps for Boosting Creativity
1. Listen to music by Johann Sebastian Bach. If Bach doesn't make you more creative, you should probably see your doctor - or your brain surgeon if you are also troubled by headaches, hallucinations or strange urges in the middle of the night.
2. Brainstorm. If properly carried out, brainstorming can help you not only come up with sacks full of new ideas, but can help you decide which is best. Click here for more information on brainstorming.
3. Always carry a small notebook and a pen or pencil around with you. That way, if you are struck by an idea, you can quickly note it down. Upon rereading your notes, you may discover about 90% of your ideas are daft. Don't worry, that's normal. What's important are the 10% that are brilliant.
4. If you're stuck for an idea, open a dictionary, randomly select a word and then try to formulate ideas incorporating this word. You'd be surprised how well this works. The concept is based on a simple but little known truth: freedom inhibits creativity. There are nothing like restrictions to get you thinking.
5. Define your problem. Grab a sheet of paper, electronic notebook, computer or whatever you use to make notes, and define your problem in detail. You'll probably find ideas positively spewing out once you've done this.
6. If you can't think, go for a walk. A change of atmosphere is good for you and gentle exercise helps shake up the brain cells.
7. Don't watch TV. Experiments performed by the JPB Creative Laboratory show that watching TV causes your brain to slowly trickle out your ears and/or nose. It's not pretty, but it happens.
8. Don't do drugs. People on drugs think they are creative. To everyone else, they seem like people on drugs.
9. Read as much as you can about everything possible. Books exercise your brain, provide inspiration and fill you with information that allows you to make creative connections easily.
10. Exercise your brain. Brains, like bodies, need exercise to keep fit. If you don't exercise your brain, it will get flabby and useless. Exercise your brain by reading a lot (see above), talking to clever people and disagreeing with people - arguing can be a terrific way to give your brain cells a workout. But note, arguing about politics or film directors is good for you; bickering over who should clean the dishes is not.
ODDPODZ
1. Listen to music by Johann Sebastian Bach. If Bach doesn't make you more creative, you should probably see your doctor - or your brain surgeon if you are also troubled by headaches, hallucinations or strange urges in the middle of the night.
2. Brainstorm. If properly carried out, brainstorming can help you not only come up with sacks full of new ideas, but can help you decide which is best. Click here for more information on brainstorming.
3. Always carry a small notebook and a pen or pencil around with you. That way, if you are struck by an idea, you can quickly note it down. Upon rereading your notes, you may discover about 90% of your ideas are daft. Don't worry, that's normal. What's important are the 10% that are brilliant.
4. If you're stuck for an idea, open a dictionary, randomly select a word and then try to formulate ideas incorporating this word. You'd be surprised how well this works. The concept is based on a simple but little known truth: freedom inhibits creativity. There are nothing like restrictions to get you thinking.
5. Define your problem. Grab a sheet of paper, electronic notebook, computer or whatever you use to make notes, and define your problem in detail. You'll probably find ideas positively spewing out once you've done this.
6. If you can't think, go for a walk. A change of atmosphere is good for you and gentle exercise helps shake up the brain cells.
7. Don't watch TV. Experiments performed by the JPB Creative Laboratory show that watching TV causes your brain to slowly trickle out your ears and/or nose. It's not pretty, but it happens.
8. Don't do drugs. People on drugs think they are creative. To everyone else, they seem like people on drugs.
9. Read as much as you can about everything possible. Books exercise your brain, provide inspiration and fill you with information that allows you to make creative connections easily.
10. Exercise your brain. Brains, like bodies, need exercise to keep fit. If you don't exercise your brain, it will get flabby and useless. Exercise your brain by reading a lot (see above), talking to clever people and disagreeing with people - arguing can be a terrific way to give your brain cells a workout. But note, arguing about politics or film directors is good for you; bickering over who should clean the dishes is not.
ODDPODZ
Monday 12 February 2007
BBC - BBC Four - Screenwipe
Highly recommended viewing - a rare enough event nowadays - Charlie Brooker delivers an acerbic, vitriolic, intelligent swipe at the inane nature of much of the media world that we are increasingly consumed by ...
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CHARLIE BROOKER'S SCREENWIPE Monday 5 February 2007 10pm-10.30pm; rpt 12.30am-1am; rpt Thursday 8 February 11.25pm-11.55pm; rpt 1.25am-1.55am
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CHARLIE BROOKER'S SCREENWIPE Monday 5 February 2007 10pm-10.30pm; rpt 12.30am-1am; rpt Thursday 8 February 11.25pm-11.55pm; rpt 1.25am-1.55am
Brace yourself for the new series of Screenwipe, as the caustic critic returns to vent his spleen about TV 'culture'. If you need an introduction to (or a reminder of) what to expect, watch a specially recorded message from Charlie:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/check/broadband/mediawrapper/consoles/bbcfour?redirect=console.shtml&nbram=1&bbram=1?pack5-screenwipe_trail_120207_16x9
BBC - BBC Four - Screenwipe
Also see: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/bbcfour/features/screen-wipe.shtml/ext/_auto/-/http://www.tvgohome.com/
The New Yorker : fact : content
Michael Lewis, a journalist and the author of “Liar’s Poker” and “Moneyball,” appeared in the magazine Poetry for the first time in the summer of 2005, with a satirical piece called “How to Make a Killing from Poetry: A Six Point Plan of Attack.” It offered its advice in bullet-point businessese: “1) Think Positive. Nobody likes a whiner. And poets always seem to be harping on the negative. . . . 2) Take Your New Positive Attitude and Direct It Towards the Paying Customer. The customer is your friend. Your typical poem really doesn’t seem to pay much attention to the living retail customer. . . . 3) Think About Your Core Message. Your average reader might like a bit of fancy writing, but at the end of the day he will always ask himself: what’s my takeaway?” So it was slightly odd, and unintentionally comical, when, last September, Poetry published a manifesto, “American Poetry in the New Century,” recapitulating Lewis’s lampoon as a serious position.
The author was John Barr, a former Wall Street executive and the president of the Poetry Foundation, an entity created after the Indianapolis heiress Ruth Lilly gave some two hundred million dollars to Poetry, in 2002. The foundation, which “exists to discover and celebrate the best poetry and to place it before the largest possible audience,” also publishes the magazine.
In the essay, Barr declared, “American poetry is ready for something new because our poets have been writing in the same way for a long time now. There is fatigue, something stagnant about the poetry being written today.” Poetry, largely absent from public life—from classrooms, bookstores, newspapers, mainstream media—“has a morale problem,” he said; it is in “a bad mood.” Poems are written only with other poets in mind, and therefore do not sell. (Two thousand copies is the industry standard.) He argued that the effect of M.F.A. programs, increasingly prevalent since the nineteen-seventies, has been “to increase the abundance of poetry, but to limit its variety.
The result is a poetry that is neither robust, resonant, nor—and I stress this quality—entertaining.” In a section titled “Live Broadly, Write Boldly,” he urged poets to do as Hemingway did, and seek experience outside the academy—take a safari, go marlin fishing, run with the bulls. “The human mind is a marketplace, especially when it comes to selecting one’s entertainment,” he wrote. “If you look at drama in Shakespeare’s day, or the novel in the last century, or the movie today, it suggests that an art enters its golden age when it is addressed to and energized by the general audiences of its time.”
The New Yorker : fact : content
The author was John Barr, a former Wall Street executive and the president of the Poetry Foundation, an entity created after the Indianapolis heiress Ruth Lilly gave some two hundred million dollars to Poetry, in 2002. The foundation, which “exists to discover and celebrate the best poetry and to place it before the largest possible audience,” also publishes the magazine.
In the essay, Barr declared, “American poetry is ready for something new because our poets have been writing in the same way for a long time now. There is fatigue, something stagnant about the poetry being written today.” Poetry, largely absent from public life—from classrooms, bookstores, newspapers, mainstream media—“has a morale problem,” he said; it is in “a bad mood.” Poems are written only with other poets in mind, and therefore do not sell. (Two thousand copies is the industry standard.) He argued that the effect of M.F.A. programs, increasingly prevalent since the nineteen-seventies, has been “to increase the abundance of poetry, but to limit its variety.
The result is a poetry that is neither robust, resonant, nor—and I stress this quality—entertaining.” In a section titled “Live Broadly, Write Boldly,” he urged poets to do as Hemingway did, and seek experience outside the academy—take a safari, go marlin fishing, run with the bulls. “The human mind is a marketplace, especially when it comes to selecting one’s entertainment,” he wrote. “If you look at drama in Shakespeare’s day, or the novel in the last century, or the movie today, it suggests that an art enters its golden age when it is addressed to and energized by the general audiences of its time.”
The New Yorker : fact : content
Saturday 10 February 2007
How Factory Girl insults Andy Warhol. - By Jim Lewis - Slate Magazine
Apologies for the rubbish formatting in the article below - it's still a good read.
Re: rubbish formatting, I am trying several blogging tools for my different blog themes - see wifiwabbit.com for all the links - to establish which one has the most potential as a platform; Google (this) isn't doing very well at the moment - Yahoo's looks simplistic but in fact is proving to be the most robust in many respects - shame it's not very customisable, however - but maybe that's why it's more robust? Discuss.
Anyway, I digress ... onto the great man himself ...
--
There's a moment about midway through Factory Girl, the latest rehashing of Edie Sedgwick's life and Andy Warhol's career, when the movie suddenly goes from being merely very bad to being truly revolting. The setup is this: Sedgwick, a lovely but very unhappy girl from a wealthy but very unhappy family, comes down to New York from Boston in search of attention and the excitement of art. She finds both in Warhol's studio: Andy has started making films; Edie is both photogenic and game. He turns her into an underground star, and she, in turn, finds a place in Warhol's coterie of drag queens, drug addicts, gay men, hustlers, fashion mavens, socialites, and assorted hangers-on. So far, so good: All of this is true enough, as Hollywood movies go, anyway.
Then she meets … well, it's a little hard to say who, exactly, she meets. The character is obviously meant to be Bob Dylan, with whom Sedgwick apparently did have some kind of brief affair, but Dylan threatened to sue the filmmakers, and the character is given a ludicrous pseudonym: "the Musician."
In the movie, the Musician is everything that Warhol is not: a good, red-blooded American boy, heterosexual, motorcycle-riding, and what's more, a poet—no, a prophet—and a paragon of anti-materialism and truth-telling. In short, he's an insufferable prig, a smug and arrogant philistine, and it's no wonder Dylan disavowed him vehemently.
Edie, on the other hand, seems to fall in love with him and so, alas, do the filmmakers, who concoct a brief and improbable moment of wholesomeness for the two of them. They ride the Musician's motorcycle upstate; he ditches it in a lake to show how little he cares for the toys his wealth has brought him; they talk about her childhood; they make love, in front of a fireplace, no less; and then Edie goes horseback riding.
All of this would be silly enough; what makes it disgusting is a brief cutaway, lasting about nine seconds, showing Warhol sitting all alone in his vast, cold studio, rapturously watching a film of Sedgwick that he's projecting on the wall. The movie cuts back to Sedgwick and the Musician romping, and I realized at once that I wasn't watching a film about Andy and Edie at all; I was watching an allegory of the Evil Fag, who battles with the Good Man for the soul of the Lost Girl. The Evil Fag, you see, is simply a failed heterosexual, frustrated and rancorous; the Lost Girl is well-meaning but confused; and the Good Man does his best to set her straight.
In Factory Girl, it all comes to a showdown. The Musician shows up at Warhol's factory for a screen test. Warhol coos and does his best to be accommodating; the Musician says things like, "No, man, don't sweat it," and then makes fun of Warhol's work. And so on: It all goes very badly. At one point, the Musician tries to pass a joint to Warhol, who didn't do drugs and who therefore demurs. "Do you smoke, man, or do just that faggy speed shit?" he asks, managing in one short sentence to sum up the film's loathsome combination of sanctimoniousness, hypocrisy, and bigotry. Luckily, one of Warhol's cronies immediately replies, "Just the faggy speed shit"—the only line in the movie that made me smile. As Dave Hickey once said, in a not dissimilar context, I'll take the real fake over the fake real any day.
Finally, the Musician walks out, with Edie following in tears. "What the hell was that?" she asks. "He's my friend."
"Baby, your friend is a bloodsucker," the Musician answers, though I suspect "cocksucker" was the word he was looking for.
It's all downhill from there. Edie makes the mistake of going back to Andy, but soon she's been passed over for the next Factory Superstar, and then she does a lot of drugs, moves to California, gets clean, and then suddenly ODs and dies, and let that be a lesson to you: The Evil Fag destroys women. The last we hear from the Musician, he's instructing his manager to help Edie out with some cash. The last thing Warhol says is "I never really knew her," and if you think that makes him sound like Judas, you're getting the idea.
Watching Factory Girl is like sitting through some risible remake of Laura, the great '40s noir that brought Clifton Webb, in the role of Waldo Lydecker, hissing and drawling opposite Gene Tierney, until she's rescued by Dana Andrews. The difference, of course, is that 1944 is not 2007; that Webb attacks his role with such energy and élan that one can't help but root for him; and that Lydecker is not, after all, a real person.
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How Factory Girl insults Andy Warhol. - By Jim Lewis - Slate Magazine
Re: rubbish formatting, I am trying several blogging tools for my different blog themes - see wifiwabbit.com for all the links - to establish which one has the most potential as a platform; Google (this) isn't doing very well at the moment - Yahoo's looks simplistic but in fact is proving to be the most robust in many respects - shame it's not very customisable, however - but maybe that's why it's more robust? Discuss.
Anyway, I digress ... onto the great man himself ...
--
There's a moment about midway through Factory Girl, the latest rehashing of Edie Sedgwick's life and Andy Warhol's career, when the movie suddenly goes from being merely very bad to being truly revolting. The setup is this: Sedgwick, a lovely but very unhappy girl from a wealthy but very unhappy family, comes down to New York from Boston in search of attention and the excitement of art. She finds both in Warhol's studio: Andy has started making films; Edie is both photogenic and game. He turns her into an underground star, and she, in turn, finds a place in Warhol's coterie of drag queens, drug addicts, gay men, hustlers, fashion mavens, socialites, and assorted hangers-on. So far, so good: All of this is true enough, as Hollywood movies go, anyway.
Then she meets … well, it's a little hard to say who, exactly, she meets. The character is obviously meant to be Bob Dylan, with whom Sedgwick apparently did have some kind of brief affair, but Dylan threatened to sue the filmmakers, and the character is given a ludicrous pseudonym: "the Musician."
In the movie, the Musician is everything that Warhol is not: a good, red-blooded American boy, heterosexual, motorcycle-riding, and what's more, a poet—no, a prophet—and a paragon of anti-materialism and truth-telling. In short, he's an insufferable prig, a smug and arrogant philistine, and it's no wonder Dylan disavowed him vehemently.
Edie, on the other hand, seems to fall in love with him and so, alas, do the filmmakers, who concoct a brief and improbable moment of wholesomeness for the two of them. They ride the Musician's motorcycle upstate; he ditches it in a lake to show how little he cares for the toys his wealth has brought him; they talk about her childhood; they make love, in front of a fireplace, no less; and then Edie goes horseback riding.
All of this would be silly enough; what makes it disgusting is a brief cutaway, lasting about nine seconds, showing Warhol sitting all alone in his vast, cold studio, rapturously watching a film of Sedgwick that he's projecting on the wall. The movie cuts back to Sedgwick and the Musician romping, and I realized at once that I wasn't watching a film about Andy and Edie at all; I was watching an allegory of the Evil Fag, who battles with the Good Man for the soul of the Lost Girl. The Evil Fag, you see, is simply a failed heterosexual, frustrated and rancorous; the Lost Girl is well-meaning but confused; and the Good Man does his best to set her straight.
In Factory Girl, it all comes to a showdown. The Musician shows up at Warhol's factory for a screen test. Warhol coos and does his best to be accommodating; the Musician says things like, "No, man, don't sweat it," and then makes fun of Warhol's work. And so on: It all goes very badly. At one point, the Musician tries to pass a joint to Warhol, who didn't do drugs and who therefore demurs. "Do you smoke, man, or do just that faggy speed shit?" he asks, managing in one short sentence to sum up the film's loathsome combination of sanctimoniousness, hypocrisy, and bigotry. Luckily, one of Warhol's cronies immediately replies, "Just the faggy speed shit"—the only line in the movie that made me smile. As Dave Hickey once said, in a not dissimilar context, I'll take the real fake over the fake real any day.
Finally, the Musician walks out, with Edie following in tears. "What the hell was that?" she asks. "He's my friend."
"Baby, your friend is a bloodsucker," the Musician answers, though I suspect "cocksucker" was the word he was looking for.
It's all downhill from there. Edie makes the mistake of going back to Andy, but soon she's been passed over for the next Factory Superstar, and then she does a lot of drugs, moves to California, gets clean, and then suddenly ODs and dies, and let that be a lesson to you: The Evil Fag destroys women. The last we hear from the Musician, he's instructing his manager to help Edie out with some cash. The last thing Warhol says is "I never really knew her," and if you think that makes him sound like Judas, you're getting the idea.
Watching Factory Girl is like sitting through some risible remake of Laura, the great '40s noir that brought Clifton Webb, in the role of Waldo Lydecker, hissing and drawling opposite Gene Tierney, until she's rescued by Dana Andrews. The difference, of course, is that 1944 is not 2007; that Webb attacks his role with such energy and élan that one can't help but root for him; and that Lydecker is not, after all, a real person.
PAGE: 12NEXT »
How Factory Girl insults Andy Warhol. - By Jim Lewis - Slate Magazine
Radio 4 loses its voice | Dt Leaders | Opinion | Telegraph
The reason that listeners mind so much about the changed tone of Radio 4 is that they love the network so. As Gillian Reynolds notes, nothing else on radio or television manages so often to please, surprise and enlighten.
Of course we are annoyed when news programmes turn into promotions for other BBC products, and those of us who follow The Archers are perfectly capable of detecting when our suspension of disbelief is being manipulated to introduce sensationalism intended to boost ratings.
Pet hates, readers tell us by letter and online via Your Voice, may be Fi Glover's archness, the painful assumed matiness of Veg Talk or the sagging facetiousness of Broadcasting House, but if an overall factor is to be found for the decline of Radio 4, it might be called its change of voice.
If, as many loyal listeners do, you like to listen to Radio 4 as you go about your daily life at home or in the car, then it is fatal to your happiness to be talked at by someone who seems not to share your interests. The unpopularity of Radio 4 under a previous controller, James Boyle, may be traced to his making listeners feel the network was his, not their, property.
Radio might seem like one-way communication. But to find a response in the hearts of listeners it must aspire to conversation, an art proper to civilisation. If interviewing guests, on Desert Island Discs or PM, should entail listening as well as questioning, so communicating with listeners requires a voice that connects – not that of a brash sports reporter, a tinny disc jockey or a self-obsessed chat-show host.
Voice means more than the noise coming out of the radio. It includes the habit of thought in the group culture of the broadcasters. Attitudes that alienate are brilliantly parodied in Radio 4's own satire, Down the Line. For listeners who do not want to leave the network they love, a more welcome voice must be found.
Radio 4 loses its voice Dt Leaders Opinion Telegraph
Of course we are annoyed when news programmes turn into promotions for other BBC products, and those of us who follow The Archers are perfectly capable of detecting when our suspension of disbelief is being manipulated to introduce sensationalism intended to boost ratings.
Pet hates, readers tell us by letter and online via Your Voice, may be Fi Glover's archness, the painful assumed matiness of Veg Talk or the sagging facetiousness of Broadcasting House, but if an overall factor is to be found for the decline of Radio 4, it might be called its change of voice.
If, as many loyal listeners do, you like to listen to Radio 4 as you go about your daily life at home or in the car, then it is fatal to your happiness to be talked at by someone who seems not to share your interests. The unpopularity of Radio 4 under a previous controller, James Boyle, may be traced to his making listeners feel the network was his, not their, property.
Radio might seem like one-way communication. But to find a response in the hearts of listeners it must aspire to conversation, an art proper to civilisation. If interviewing guests, on Desert Island Discs or PM, should entail listening as well as questioning, so communicating with listeners requires a voice that connects – not that of a brash sports reporter, a tinny disc jockey or a self-obsessed chat-show host.
Voice means more than the noise coming out of the radio. It includes the habit of thought in the group culture of the broadcasters. Attitudes that alienate are brilliantly parodied in Radio 4's own satire, Down the Line. For listeners who do not want to leave the network they love, a more welcome voice must be found.
Radio 4 loses its voice Dt Leaders Opinion Telegraph
Friday 9 February 2007
Hillary the Pol ...
Hillary Rodham Clinton has navigated difficult territory as Bill Clinton’s full partner, and throughout her career she has shown a remarkable resiliency and a willingness to reposition herself as many times as necessary to get the job done—her way.
During the early months of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s activities on behalf of health-care reform, she took Capitol Hill by storm. Describing a meeting she held with the Senate Finance Committee—a group that will be critical to the passage of any health-care legislation—Lawrence O’Donnell, Jr., the committee’s chief of staff, told me, “Mrs. Clinton came into that room, and she opened the discussion at about four-twenty-five in the afternoon. We were about eighteen minutes into it when she stopped—I remember, I looked at the clock. And what I had just heard were the most perfectly composed, perfectly punctuated sentences, growing into paragraphs, in the most perfect, fluid presentation about what our problems in this field were and what we could do about them.” He added, “And then she held her position in the face of questioning by these senators around the table, many of whom know a great deal about the subject. And she was more impressive than any Cabinet member who has sat in that chair.”
There were some people, as there had been in Arkansas over the years, who found her presence so compelling that her husband’s seemed to pale by comparison. Senator Tom Daschle, of South Dakota, who became one of her most ardent advocates on health-care legislation, has described an issues conference for Democratic senators held in Jamestown, Virginia, in April, 1993, at which Hillary Clinton; Ira Magaziner, the director of the health-care task force; and Judith Feder, a deputy assistant secretary in the Department of Health and Human Services and the head of the task force’s working groups, were to address the senators during the day. “We thought that Ira and Judy would be the primary speakers, and the First Lady would be there to fill the stature gap and impress the senators with the importance of the proposal,” Daschle recalled. “Well, Ira and Judy got lost coming down. And the First Lady said, ‘I don’t know that we have to wait. Let’s get started.’ She had no notes—Ira and Judy had all the materials. And she spoke with such eloquence and conviction and knowledge of the subject. That night, the President spoke. But at least half the senators who were there indicated that it was that morning, when Mrs. Clinton spoke, that was the highlight of the weekend.”
Bedazzled as many in Congress were by the force of her intellect, so evident in these presentations, it was hardly an unknown quantity: her reputation as a formidable lawyer with a first-rate analytical mind had preceded her. What was unexpected, in those early months of her tenure as First Lady, was her sallying forth with the instincts and tactics of a seasoned politician. A person who observed her relations with Congress has since said, “There was a skepticism on the Hill about her role”—as head of the health-care initiative. “Was she a dilettante, not really willing to dirty her hands? But, as it turned out, she was willing to travel to people’s districts, willing to call their favorite radio reporters. She is substantively driven—but she was also engaged in courting, incessantly. . . . A lot of people were surprised that she was working this issue the way someone would who was not the First Lady.” This person added, “The First Lady is a pol.”
Her courtship of members of Congress was no less successful for being so overtly orchestrated. She called on many members in their offices, frequently bringing along a photographer, who would snap pictures of her not only with the senator or representative but with the receptionist and other staff people; several days later, autographed photographs would arrive. (After I attended an event where I shook hands with Hillary, in the course of researching this article, I, too, was sent an autographed photograph.) A member of one representative’s staff remarked to me, “All these egomaniacs—the notion that the First Lady would come to their office! And these were more than courtesy calls. They were so scripted and focussed she could have been working for the C.I.A. These were intelligence-gathering meetings, not chitchat. When she visited my boss, the visit was scheduled for a half hour and she spent an hour and a half. They talked about health care, his home state, kids—everything. She was trying to figure out what these people were about.” And by September, when she went to the Hill to testify at hearings of five different Senate and House committees, this aide added, “she basically had a dossier on everyone, so she could incorporate into her responses something about a member’s personal background.”
When J. J. (Jake) Pickle, a representative from Texas who sits on the House Ways and Means and Joint Taxation Committees, announced that he was going to retire, Hillary was one of the first people in Washington to call him, “thanking him for his service, telling him how much she was looking forward to working with him through ’94,” one person said. Representative John Dingell, of Michigan, the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, revered his father, a representative who had introduced health-care legislation in 1943 and then fought to keep it alive for more than a decade; Dingell himself has introduced similar legislation in every Congress since 1955, when he succeeded his father in the House. In early June of 1993, as Dingell was taking call-in questions on a Detroit radio station, he suddenly found Hillary on the line. “She was calling in to say, ‘Happy Anniversary on your dad’s bill—it’s taken fifty years and we are going to try to pass it,’ ” an aide to Dingell recalled. “And after her father died she wrote him a letter—something very personal, about how she thought of him and his father. He was very touched by it.” Then, when she testified before Dingell’s committee during her public congressional début, in September, she began by invoking the memory of Dingell’s father and the legislation he had urged so tenaciously.
That début—a marathon of back-to-back appearances before five committees—was widely perceived as virtuoso. Referring in general to her appearances to promote health care, of which her congressional testimony was the most sustained and dramatic, Representative Pat Williams, of Montana, said, “We were embarrassed by our surprise, but we were surprised—that in a city that relies on staff and note cards she could travel alone and speak with no notes.”
To those who knew her well, however, the feat seemed characteristic. Always the industrious student, she had immersed herself in the arcana of health care for nine months; she knew her subject cold. And she knew all her questioners. In a speech earlier in September she had noted that as of that date she had met more than a hundred and thirty times with members of Congress to talk about health care, and with more than eleven hundred assorted groups.
The risk that Hillary Clinton faced in her performance was not that she would stumble on her facts or be caught short. It was, rather, a risk that she had been mindful of during her past decade of public life: that her acumen and high competence, unadorned, would narrow her public appeal, and alienate the more retrograde; and also that her steeliness, if it were to show through, would alienate many more. As an antidote, she chose to strike a warmer, softer chord in her opening. It was a chord that she had struck very deliberately during the Presidential campaign, and, for that matter, a chord that President Clinton himself struck, in the first of two recent interviews with me, when, after saying that people mistake her for “this sort of superstrong, brilliant person who seems to be almost mechanical in her power and strength and all that,” he declared, “There’s that whole other more vulnerable, more human side of her.” At the first congressional committee before which she testified, the House Ways and Means Committee, chaired by Representative Dan Rostenkowski, Hillary began by saying, “The official reason I am here today is because I have had that responsibility”—for health-care reform. “But more importantly for me, I’m here as a mother, a wife, a daughter, a sister, a woman.”
Several months ago, before the Whitewater investigation and revelations about Hillary Clinton’s commodities trading had begun to dog her, Betsey Wright, who was Bill Clinton’s chief of staff for many years when he was governor, and remains close to the Clintons, told me, “Hillary is happier now than she’s ever been. She liked practicing corporate law, but she was doing it because she, as the breadwinner, had to do it. Now she gets to do her first love, full time.”
The detour from that “first love”—effecting public policy—which Hillary Rodham took when she moved to Arkansas and subsequently married Bill Clinton surprised some people who knew her and had believed that her aim was to achieve political power on her own, for Hillary Rodham was a strikingly intelligent, notably self-confident and self-contained young woman, about whom there was no suggestion of an adjunct, and her political ambition was plain. Her directedness is what fellow-students recall as having been her most distinguishing characteristic at Wellesley (where she was president of the student government) and, later, at Yale Law School. A classmate of Hillary’s at Wellesley told me, “She was so ambitious. She already knew the value of networking, of starting a Rolodex, even back then. She cultivated relationships with teachers and administrators even more than with students. While she was respected across the board, and she had her circle of friends, I would not say she was popular. She was a little too intimidating for that.” She was marked then, too, by the political pragmatism that has since become famous. After the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a group of black students on campus were threatening a hunger strike if the Wellesley administration did not address their demands. It was the kind of situation in which, as a classmate recalled, “Hillary would step in and organize an outlet that would be acceptable on the Wellesley campus. She coöpted the real protest by creating the academic one—which, looking back on it, I think was a mature thing to do. In any event, she was never truly left. Very much a moderate, very much a facilitator.”
At Yale, Hillary Rodham’s progression toward a political career seemed to be continuing apace. One of her women classmates told me, “Most of my friends and I were always agonizing, filled with self-doubt—you know, ‘Why are we here? What are we doing?’ Hillary had no self-doubt. She knew she wanted to be politically influential and prominent. She wanted recognition. And she was there because Yale was the kind of law school where you would think about social policy. That year showed her to be a natural politician. She had a natural charismatic quality—people loved to be around her. She liked studying in groups, organizing social events—and the people around her felt that that was where the action was.” She was also unmoved by much of what was eddying about her, in that tumultuous period of the early seventies. “She did nothing to excess,” this classmate told me. “She didn’t do drugs. She was too cautious, and would never take such a risk. She took no joy in the illicit. The forbidden held no fascination for her—she lacked any self-damaging impulse.” That Hillary Rodham conducted herself in such a no-nonsense—even exemplary—way may have been due mainly to an innate conservatism; but this woman believed at the time that Hillary was also conducting herself as she did with an eye to her political future. “In the years since, she has dissembled about her own ambition,” this woman continued, “but at Yale Law School she did not dissemble about her desire to be an important political figure.”
It was at Yale, of course, that she met Bill Clinton. Classmates recall him as refreshingly candid about his national political ambitions. While he may not have discussed, specifically, a desire to be President, it was not an idea that would have seemed outlandish to his closest friends in Arkansas; a high-school classmate said that whenever she sent Clinton a card she tried to find one bearing a picture of the White House. A friend of Hillary’s commented, “The fact that Bill knew he was going to run for political office was very attractive to Hillary.”
Hillary Rodham and Bill Clinton made a powerful combination. People who knew both of them at that time say that the two were plainly crazy about each other, and each saw in the other a partner for the political future. Betsey Wright says, “They both passionately share the sense that they’re supposed to make a difference in this world—and they had that before they met each other.” Some of their friends, however, have commented that Hillary (for all her pragmatism) seemed more messianic than Bill; a friend who knew them in law school says, “With Bill, you felt he just wanted to be President, whereas Hillary was really animated by her sense of what was right. She had this religious zeal.”
Over the years, such an exceptional pair inevitably evoked comparisons between them, and debate about which of them was the brighter. “They both have an extra computer in their brains,” Betsey Wright declared. While it became the fashion later for those who knew the two only casually to say that Hillary was smarter, that was not the prevailing view among their closer associates. Ellen Brantley, who knew Hillary slightly at Wellesley and later as a fellow faculty member at the University of Arkansas School of Law, in Fayetteville, and then in Little Rock as a fellow-attorney, and who was appointed a state judge by Bill Clinton, said of Hillary, “She is clearly highly intelligent, and has succeeded, in part, through the practical application of her intelligence. She is very articulate, very good at communicating her intelligence. I don’t think she is smarter than Bill, though some people will say that. If they were in the same class, she would attend all the classes, read all the assignments, outline her notes, study hard for the exam. Bill would stop by some of the classes, read a couple of the assignments while also reading other, related things, and then write an exam that brought in some ideas that had been introduced in class, some outside—linking them in a very original way. And they’d both get an A.”
In choosing to move to Arkansas and marry Bill Clinton, Hillary Rodham was surrendering, at least for the time being, any autonomous route to political power. It was a decision about which she may have retained some ambivalence; one friend recalled her commenting, in the eighties, “Someone from my youth group called and said, ‘It’s great that you’re a governor’s wife—but we thought you would be governor.’ ” And at the time, Betsey Wright told me, she was disappointed at what she viewed as Hillary’s abdication of her own political calling. Wright, who met Hillary and Bill when they came to Texas to work on the McGovern campaign, in 1972, founded an organization to recruit and train women to run for political office and to fund their candidacies, and she was mightily impressed by Hillary. “I’m almost a student of strong women leaders. And she was so unusual, even in that cadre,” Wright said. But what Hillary saw, Wright continued, was that Bill Clinton could be President—she “saw that in him when I first met them.” She added, “I’m not saying that’s why she married him—but it was something she saw. And she’s always seen she could have political power with him—just not elected. It was my shortsightedness that I felt when she married him that she was giving up her chance for political power.”
Hillary Rodham worked for about eight months on the impeachment-inquiry staff of the House Judiciary Committee investigating President Richard Nixon—an extraordinary assignment for a young lawyer—before the move to Arkansas. She was just in time to help Clinton in his ultimately futile campaign for a congressional seat, challenging a popular incumbent. Political campaigns seem to have always been a natural medium for her. In 1972, when she and Clinton went to Texas to campaign for McGovern, she had made a powerful impression on Sara Ehrman, now at the Democratic National Committee. “I remember her as this skinny kid from Yale, wearing brown corduroys and a brown shirt, very earnest and very tough,” Ehrman told me. “In the ambience of San Antonio, nobody got to the point for the first three hours, and she got to the point in the first two minutes. . . ‘Where’s the Anglo vote? Where’s the Hispanic vote? Where’s the liberal vote?’ She was no novice in any respect.”
Many of Bill Clinton’s friends at that time have recalled that their expectations of Hillary were very high, because Clinton had talked about her volubly, with great intensity and deep admiration, for some time before her arrival. Those friends say that they were not disappointed. Rudy Moore, who served as Clinton’s chief of staff in his first term as governor, says of his first impression of Hillary Rodham, “She had done interesting things at an early age—especially, working for the House Judiciary Committee. And she was very confident. She never projected herself as anything other than your equal—male or female.”
Carolyn Staley, who had become a friend of Clinton’s in high school, told me that Hillary represented a break with Clinton’s past as far as women were concerned. “He was everybody’s flame. He had girls everywhere he went—a new girl every weekend.” Staley has remained close to Clinton, and today she considers him her best friend. “I think he fell in love with her mind, and her confidence,” she said of Hillary. “All the other girls fawned on him. But Hillary’s attitude was: I don’t need you. She was going to lead her life. She never drew her identity from him. I remember Virginia”—Virginia Kelley, Clinton’s mother—“saying about Hillary, after she met her, ‘Bill, she’s so different.’ You know, Bill had always had beauty queens. And he said, ‘Look, Ma, I have work to do. I don’t need to be married to a sex goddess.’ ”
During my first conversation with President Clinton, in the Oval Office, the President—a man whose ruddiness and startlingly blue eyes make for a vivid physical presence—disputed the notion that girls had “fawned” on him, and stressed that he had had girlfriends before Hillary who were also bright, independent young women. About Hillary, however, he said, “I just liked— I liked being around her, because I thought I’d never be bored being with her. In the beginning, I used to tell her that I would like being old with her. That I thought that was an important thing—to be with someone you thought you’d always love being old with.”
Hillary the Pol by Connie Bruck continues >>
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The New Yorker : archive : content
During the early months of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s activities on behalf of health-care reform, she took Capitol Hill by storm. Describing a meeting she held with the Senate Finance Committee—a group that will be critical to the passage of any health-care legislation—Lawrence O’Donnell, Jr., the committee’s chief of staff, told me, “Mrs. Clinton came into that room, and she opened the discussion at about four-twenty-five in the afternoon. We were about eighteen minutes into it when she stopped—I remember, I looked at the clock. And what I had just heard were the most perfectly composed, perfectly punctuated sentences, growing into paragraphs, in the most perfect, fluid presentation about what our problems in this field were and what we could do about them.” He added, “And then she held her position in the face of questioning by these senators around the table, many of whom know a great deal about the subject. And she was more impressive than any Cabinet member who has sat in that chair.”
There were some people, as there had been in Arkansas over the years, who found her presence so compelling that her husband’s seemed to pale by comparison. Senator Tom Daschle, of South Dakota, who became one of her most ardent advocates on health-care legislation, has described an issues conference for Democratic senators held in Jamestown, Virginia, in April, 1993, at which Hillary Clinton; Ira Magaziner, the director of the health-care task force; and Judith Feder, a deputy assistant secretary in the Department of Health and Human Services and the head of the task force’s working groups, were to address the senators during the day. “We thought that Ira and Judy would be the primary speakers, and the First Lady would be there to fill the stature gap and impress the senators with the importance of the proposal,” Daschle recalled. “Well, Ira and Judy got lost coming down. And the First Lady said, ‘I don’t know that we have to wait. Let’s get started.’ She had no notes—Ira and Judy had all the materials. And she spoke with such eloquence and conviction and knowledge of the subject. That night, the President spoke. But at least half the senators who were there indicated that it was that morning, when Mrs. Clinton spoke, that was the highlight of the weekend.”
Bedazzled as many in Congress were by the force of her intellect, so evident in these presentations, it was hardly an unknown quantity: her reputation as a formidable lawyer with a first-rate analytical mind had preceded her. What was unexpected, in those early months of her tenure as First Lady, was her sallying forth with the instincts and tactics of a seasoned politician. A person who observed her relations with Congress has since said, “There was a skepticism on the Hill about her role”—as head of the health-care initiative. “Was she a dilettante, not really willing to dirty her hands? But, as it turned out, she was willing to travel to people’s districts, willing to call their favorite radio reporters. She is substantively driven—but she was also engaged in courting, incessantly. . . . A lot of people were surprised that she was working this issue the way someone would who was not the First Lady.” This person added, “The First Lady is a pol.”
Her courtship of members of Congress was no less successful for being so overtly orchestrated. She called on many members in their offices, frequently bringing along a photographer, who would snap pictures of her not only with the senator or representative but with the receptionist and other staff people; several days later, autographed photographs would arrive. (After I attended an event where I shook hands with Hillary, in the course of researching this article, I, too, was sent an autographed photograph.) A member of one representative’s staff remarked to me, “All these egomaniacs—the notion that the First Lady would come to their office! And these were more than courtesy calls. They were so scripted and focussed she could have been working for the C.I.A. These were intelligence-gathering meetings, not chitchat. When she visited my boss, the visit was scheduled for a half hour and she spent an hour and a half. They talked about health care, his home state, kids—everything. She was trying to figure out what these people were about.” And by September, when she went to the Hill to testify at hearings of five different Senate and House committees, this aide added, “she basically had a dossier on everyone, so she could incorporate into her responses something about a member’s personal background.”
When J. J. (Jake) Pickle, a representative from Texas who sits on the House Ways and Means and Joint Taxation Committees, announced that he was going to retire, Hillary was one of the first people in Washington to call him, “thanking him for his service, telling him how much she was looking forward to working with him through ’94,” one person said. Representative John Dingell, of Michigan, the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, revered his father, a representative who had introduced health-care legislation in 1943 and then fought to keep it alive for more than a decade; Dingell himself has introduced similar legislation in every Congress since 1955, when he succeeded his father in the House. In early June of 1993, as Dingell was taking call-in questions on a Detroit radio station, he suddenly found Hillary on the line. “She was calling in to say, ‘Happy Anniversary on your dad’s bill—it’s taken fifty years and we are going to try to pass it,’ ” an aide to Dingell recalled. “And after her father died she wrote him a letter—something very personal, about how she thought of him and his father. He was very touched by it.” Then, when she testified before Dingell’s committee during her public congressional début, in September, she began by invoking the memory of Dingell’s father and the legislation he had urged so tenaciously.
That début—a marathon of back-to-back appearances before five committees—was widely perceived as virtuoso. Referring in general to her appearances to promote health care, of which her congressional testimony was the most sustained and dramatic, Representative Pat Williams, of Montana, said, “We were embarrassed by our surprise, but we were surprised—that in a city that relies on staff and note cards she could travel alone and speak with no notes.”
To those who knew her well, however, the feat seemed characteristic. Always the industrious student, she had immersed herself in the arcana of health care for nine months; she knew her subject cold. And she knew all her questioners. In a speech earlier in September she had noted that as of that date she had met more than a hundred and thirty times with members of Congress to talk about health care, and with more than eleven hundred assorted groups.
The risk that Hillary Clinton faced in her performance was not that she would stumble on her facts or be caught short. It was, rather, a risk that she had been mindful of during her past decade of public life: that her acumen and high competence, unadorned, would narrow her public appeal, and alienate the more retrograde; and also that her steeliness, if it were to show through, would alienate many more. As an antidote, she chose to strike a warmer, softer chord in her opening. It was a chord that she had struck very deliberately during the Presidential campaign, and, for that matter, a chord that President Clinton himself struck, in the first of two recent interviews with me, when, after saying that people mistake her for “this sort of superstrong, brilliant person who seems to be almost mechanical in her power and strength and all that,” he declared, “There’s that whole other more vulnerable, more human side of her.” At the first congressional committee before which she testified, the House Ways and Means Committee, chaired by Representative Dan Rostenkowski, Hillary began by saying, “The official reason I am here today is because I have had that responsibility”—for health-care reform. “But more importantly for me, I’m here as a mother, a wife, a daughter, a sister, a woman.”
Several months ago, before the Whitewater investigation and revelations about Hillary Clinton’s commodities trading had begun to dog her, Betsey Wright, who was Bill Clinton’s chief of staff for many years when he was governor, and remains close to the Clintons, told me, “Hillary is happier now than she’s ever been. She liked practicing corporate law, but she was doing it because she, as the breadwinner, had to do it. Now she gets to do her first love, full time.”
The detour from that “first love”—effecting public policy—which Hillary Rodham took when she moved to Arkansas and subsequently married Bill Clinton surprised some people who knew her and had believed that her aim was to achieve political power on her own, for Hillary Rodham was a strikingly intelligent, notably self-confident and self-contained young woman, about whom there was no suggestion of an adjunct, and her political ambition was plain. Her directedness is what fellow-students recall as having been her most distinguishing characteristic at Wellesley (where she was president of the student government) and, later, at Yale Law School. A classmate of Hillary’s at Wellesley told me, “She was so ambitious. She already knew the value of networking, of starting a Rolodex, even back then. She cultivated relationships with teachers and administrators even more than with students. While she was respected across the board, and she had her circle of friends, I would not say she was popular. She was a little too intimidating for that.” She was marked then, too, by the political pragmatism that has since become famous. After the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a group of black students on campus were threatening a hunger strike if the Wellesley administration did not address their demands. It was the kind of situation in which, as a classmate recalled, “Hillary would step in and organize an outlet that would be acceptable on the Wellesley campus. She coöpted the real protest by creating the academic one—which, looking back on it, I think was a mature thing to do. In any event, she was never truly left. Very much a moderate, very much a facilitator.”
At Yale, Hillary Rodham’s progression toward a political career seemed to be continuing apace. One of her women classmates told me, “Most of my friends and I were always agonizing, filled with self-doubt—you know, ‘Why are we here? What are we doing?’ Hillary had no self-doubt. She knew she wanted to be politically influential and prominent. She wanted recognition. And she was there because Yale was the kind of law school where you would think about social policy. That year showed her to be a natural politician. She had a natural charismatic quality—people loved to be around her. She liked studying in groups, organizing social events—and the people around her felt that that was where the action was.” She was also unmoved by much of what was eddying about her, in that tumultuous period of the early seventies. “She did nothing to excess,” this classmate told me. “She didn’t do drugs. She was too cautious, and would never take such a risk. She took no joy in the illicit. The forbidden held no fascination for her—she lacked any self-damaging impulse.” That Hillary Rodham conducted herself in such a no-nonsense—even exemplary—way may have been due mainly to an innate conservatism; but this woman believed at the time that Hillary was also conducting herself as she did with an eye to her political future. “In the years since, she has dissembled about her own ambition,” this woman continued, “but at Yale Law School she did not dissemble about her desire to be an important political figure.”
It was at Yale, of course, that she met Bill Clinton. Classmates recall him as refreshingly candid about his national political ambitions. While he may not have discussed, specifically, a desire to be President, it was not an idea that would have seemed outlandish to his closest friends in Arkansas; a high-school classmate said that whenever she sent Clinton a card she tried to find one bearing a picture of the White House. A friend of Hillary’s commented, “The fact that Bill knew he was going to run for political office was very attractive to Hillary.”
Hillary Rodham and Bill Clinton made a powerful combination. People who knew both of them at that time say that the two were plainly crazy about each other, and each saw in the other a partner for the political future. Betsey Wright says, “They both passionately share the sense that they’re supposed to make a difference in this world—and they had that before they met each other.” Some of their friends, however, have commented that Hillary (for all her pragmatism) seemed more messianic than Bill; a friend who knew them in law school says, “With Bill, you felt he just wanted to be President, whereas Hillary was really animated by her sense of what was right. She had this religious zeal.”
Over the years, such an exceptional pair inevitably evoked comparisons between them, and debate about which of them was the brighter. “They both have an extra computer in their brains,” Betsey Wright declared. While it became the fashion later for those who knew the two only casually to say that Hillary was smarter, that was not the prevailing view among their closer associates. Ellen Brantley, who knew Hillary slightly at Wellesley and later as a fellow faculty member at the University of Arkansas School of Law, in Fayetteville, and then in Little Rock as a fellow-attorney, and who was appointed a state judge by Bill Clinton, said of Hillary, “She is clearly highly intelligent, and has succeeded, in part, through the practical application of her intelligence. She is very articulate, very good at communicating her intelligence. I don’t think she is smarter than Bill, though some people will say that. If they were in the same class, she would attend all the classes, read all the assignments, outline her notes, study hard for the exam. Bill would stop by some of the classes, read a couple of the assignments while also reading other, related things, and then write an exam that brought in some ideas that had been introduced in class, some outside—linking them in a very original way. And they’d both get an A.”
In choosing to move to Arkansas and marry Bill Clinton, Hillary Rodham was surrendering, at least for the time being, any autonomous route to political power. It was a decision about which she may have retained some ambivalence; one friend recalled her commenting, in the eighties, “Someone from my youth group called and said, ‘It’s great that you’re a governor’s wife—but we thought you would be governor.’ ” And at the time, Betsey Wright told me, she was disappointed at what she viewed as Hillary’s abdication of her own political calling. Wright, who met Hillary and Bill when they came to Texas to work on the McGovern campaign, in 1972, founded an organization to recruit and train women to run for political office and to fund their candidacies, and she was mightily impressed by Hillary. “I’m almost a student of strong women leaders. And she was so unusual, even in that cadre,” Wright said. But what Hillary saw, Wright continued, was that Bill Clinton could be President—she “saw that in him when I first met them.” She added, “I’m not saying that’s why she married him—but it was something she saw. And she’s always seen she could have political power with him—just not elected. It was my shortsightedness that I felt when she married him that she was giving up her chance for political power.”
Hillary Rodham worked for about eight months on the impeachment-inquiry staff of the House Judiciary Committee investigating President Richard Nixon—an extraordinary assignment for a young lawyer—before the move to Arkansas. She was just in time to help Clinton in his ultimately futile campaign for a congressional seat, challenging a popular incumbent. Political campaigns seem to have always been a natural medium for her. In 1972, when she and Clinton went to Texas to campaign for McGovern, she had made a powerful impression on Sara Ehrman, now at the Democratic National Committee. “I remember her as this skinny kid from Yale, wearing brown corduroys and a brown shirt, very earnest and very tough,” Ehrman told me. “In the ambience of San Antonio, nobody got to the point for the first three hours, and she got to the point in the first two minutes. . . ‘Where’s the Anglo vote? Where’s the Hispanic vote? Where’s the liberal vote?’ She was no novice in any respect.”
Many of Bill Clinton’s friends at that time have recalled that their expectations of Hillary were very high, because Clinton had talked about her volubly, with great intensity and deep admiration, for some time before her arrival. Those friends say that they were not disappointed. Rudy Moore, who served as Clinton’s chief of staff in his first term as governor, says of his first impression of Hillary Rodham, “She had done interesting things at an early age—especially, working for the House Judiciary Committee. And she was very confident. She never projected herself as anything other than your equal—male or female.”
Carolyn Staley, who had become a friend of Clinton’s in high school, told me that Hillary represented a break with Clinton’s past as far as women were concerned. “He was everybody’s flame. He had girls everywhere he went—a new girl every weekend.” Staley has remained close to Clinton, and today she considers him her best friend. “I think he fell in love with her mind, and her confidence,” she said of Hillary. “All the other girls fawned on him. But Hillary’s attitude was: I don’t need you. She was going to lead her life. She never drew her identity from him. I remember Virginia”—Virginia Kelley, Clinton’s mother—“saying about Hillary, after she met her, ‘Bill, she’s so different.’ You know, Bill had always had beauty queens. And he said, ‘Look, Ma, I have work to do. I don’t need to be married to a sex goddess.’ ”
During my first conversation with President Clinton, in the Oval Office, the President—a man whose ruddiness and startlingly blue eyes make for a vivid physical presence—disputed the notion that girls had “fawned” on him, and stressed that he had had girlfriends before Hillary who were also bright, independent young women. About Hillary, however, he said, “I just liked— I liked being around her, because I thought I’d never be bored being with her. In the beginning, I used to tell her that I would like being old with her. That I thought that was an important thing—to be with someone you thought you’d always love being old with.”
Hillary the Pol by Connie Bruck continues >>
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